MATH I

HANDS-ON MATH

	By Yelena McManaman and Maria Droujkova, Moebius Noodles (Delta Stream Media, 2014) – subtitled “Adventurous Math for the Playground Crowd” – is a 80+-page collection of games and investigations for kids, plus helpful hints for parents hoping to provide a mind-expanding math environment. The book is divided into four sections: Symmetry, Quantity, Function, and Grid. Kids learn real math terms – say, transitive property – through play. Delightful, substantive, and sensible. For ages 1 and up.
	The Mother Goose Programs, developed by the Vermont Center for the Book, pair math- and science-related pictures book with open-ended investigative experiments and hands-on activities. Excellent for ages 3-5.
	Associated with the Mother Goose Programs is the What’s the BIG Idea? workbook series, a collection of six creatively interactive books designed to get kids excited about and involved in science and math. The books – crammed with hands-on activities and games – are illustrated with a mix of big bright-colored drawings and photo collage, and each comes with a companion CD featuring an appropriately themed picture book, printable activity cards and manipulatives, and a resource list. The books also include complete parent/teacher instructions, lots of extension suggestions, and an answer key. Titles are Counting (with Rick Walton’s How Many, How Many, How Many), Measuring (with Susan Hightower’s Twelve Snails to One Lizard), Shapes (with Dayle Ann Dodds’s The Shape of Things), Patterns (with Trudy Harris’s Pattern Fish), Sorting (with W. Nikola-Lisa’s Bein’ with You This Way), and Maps (with Pat Hutchins’s Rosie’s Walk).
	Family Math for Young Children (Grace Coates and Jean Stenmark; Lawrence Hall of Science, 1997) is a creative investigative approach to early math, concentrating on such skills as counting, estimating, comparing, measuring, shape recognition, directions, logic, and sorting. Sample activities include making jigsaw puzzles, making (and sorting) a stamp collection, making and playing number games, playing shadow games, measuring yourself (and family and friends) with adding machine tape, and designing a quilt patch. All instructions, game boards, matching cards, and number charts are included in the book. For each activity, there’s an explanation of the math skills involved, a materials list, and complete instructions. For ages 3-7.
	Margaret McNamara’s How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin? (Schwartz and Wade, 2007) turns into a mathematical guessing game as the kids in Mr. Tiffin’s class try to figure out how many seeds are in large, small, and middle-sized pumpkins (A million? 500? 22?) Finally they cut the pumpkins open, scoop out the seeds, and count them, which is (1) messy and (2) the most straightforward way to find out. For ages 4-8.
	For a mathematical lesson plan on pumpkins and pumpkin seeds, see Pumpkin Exploration.
	Candyland (Hasbro), famed as a first board game for kids since the 1940s, is now available in several versions. Kids learn counting, colors, and how to follow simple directions while racing to the Candy Castle.
	Count Your Chickens (Peaceable Kingdom) is an award-winning cooperative board game for ages 3-6 in which players count spaces to collect baby chicks and return them to their coop. Comes with 40 chicks and one mother hen.
	SET is an award-winning card game for ages 5 and up in which players are challenged to identify three-card sets based on such features as shape, shading, number, and color. It can be played by several players of widely varying ages, all at the same time – and older players don’t necessarily have advantages over younger.
	There are dozens of sources for commercial math manipulatives and hands-on kits. A good starting point is Learning Resources, which sells dozens, including plastic counters, pattern blocks, tangrams, magnetic numbers, base-ten blocks, balances, and more.
	See these printable math manipulatives. (Free download.)

MATH AROUND THE WORLD

	Quentin Blake’s Ten Frogs/Dix Grenouilles (Anova Books, 2008) is a French/English animal counting book, running from one crow (that is, un corbeau) to 100 wasps. For ages 3-7.
	In Yuyi Morales’s Mexican-themed Just a Minute (Chronicle Books, 2003), a skeleton arrives at Grandma Beetle’s door, demanding that she “come along.” Grandma, however, cleverly puts him off with a series of (countable) chores: she has one house to sweep, two pots of tea to brew, three pounds of corn to make into tortillas, and nine grandchildren to invite to her birthday party. Children plus skeleton – guest number ten – have such a wonderful time that the skeleton decides that Grandma doesn’t need to come along after all. Readers learn to count to ten in both English and Spanish. For ages 4-7.
	In Lezlie Evans’s Can You Count Ten Toes? (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2004), readers learn to count to ten in ten different languages: Spanish, French, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Tagalog, Russian, Hindi, Hebrew, and Zulu. Included are phonetic pronunciations for each number word and a map showing where the featured languages are spoken. For ages 4-8.
	By Muriel Feelings, Moja Means One (Puffin, 1992) is a Swahili counting book, in which kids learn numbers 1-10 in Swahili as well as interesting facts about the land and culture of East Africa. The book begins with one impressive Mount Kilimanjaro, and continues through two kids playing a game of Mankala, three coffee trees, and so on, culminating in a group of ten children listening to a traditional storyteller. With lovely earth-toned illustrations by Tom Feelings. For ages 4-8.
	In Andrea Cheng’s Grandfather Counts (Lee & Low, 2003), Helen’s grandfather, newly arrived in America from China, speaks no English and Helen and her siblings speak no Chinese.  Gradually, though, as they watch passing trains together, her grandfather begins to teach Helen to count in Chinese, while she teaches him to count in English. A lovely story of an intergenerational relationship (with counting). For ages 4-8.
	Each book in the Count Your Way series by Jim Haskins (Lerner) is an introduction to a different world culture while learning to count to ten in a foreign language. Count Your Way Through Japan, for example, begins with one Mount Fuji and two chopsticks. For ages 4-8.
	Learn how to count in 21 languages with this great Count the Animals app.