Learning Math Concepts

When we were last at the library...{How many posts do I start that way? For the record we go almost every week and almost always find something interesting!}...we found a few new to us math resources. 

The first was a School House Rock DVD on multiplication.  My children love the songs and cartoon characters from School House Rock.  They happen to have two here at home.  One is on America and the other is science oriented.  However, they had never seen a math one before.  It took all of a few seconds to decide they wanted to check out this DVD.  Using some catchy tunes {Personally, I don't think they are as catchy as some of the other School House Rock videos, but the children liked them.} and words, the video covers most of the multiplication facts from zero to twelve.

The other resources we found were books.  A Million Dots is written by Andrew Clements, who also wrote Frindle which my children liked a lot.  This picture book attempts to show readers how much one million really is.  The book is fabulous!  It begins by showing ten dots, then one hundred dots, five hundred, and a section of one thousand dots.  After this page, another describes how big the number one million is and how long one million seconds is {eleven and a half days} and then the main part of the book begins with measurements and number facts that seem large, but aren't one million.  Each accompanying picture has dots all over it.  As you view the book, you view the dots and the total number of dots you have seen is tallied on each page.  This number of dots corresponds closely to the number within the fact.  Finally, by the end of the book, you have viewed one million dots.  The entire book is delightful.  All of our children liked this book.

Another math book we found was Counting on the Woods, by George Ella Lyon.  This book contains the words of a poem printed beside actual photographs of the items mentioned.  My preschooler counted the items as I read him the words.  He found the counting easy, but enjoyed looking at the pictures.  He was surprised to learn that some nests are made by animals other than birds.

Finally, we found a few Sir Cumference books, written by Cindy Neuschwander.  Have you read any of these?  I first heard these mentioned in the Veritas Press catalog.  However, it was a few years ago, and I had forgotten about these math story books until I saw a few sitting on the shelf at our library.  These books are cleverly written with an enjoyable math related story set in the Middle Ages.  Some of the ones we checked out were Sir Cumference and All the King's Tens {about place value}, Sir Cumference and the Sword in the Cone, and Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi.  We may just keep this last one, and reread it on Pi Day {March 14th - 3.14}.


By the way, are you looking for Pi Day activities?  Maybe check here: TeachPi