This week, I want to share with you a great book for talking about counting, addition, multiplication and equality. I recently used this book with my third graders to get at the idea of equivalency but have also used it with younger students who have been learning about counting and how to stay organized when counting.
This is a Marilyn Burns Brainy Day Book
so it also has a list of suggested activities at the back. These books also tend to go in and out of print but the used market is quite consistent and the quality is usually great.
In this book the king decides he needs to count all the commissioners he has doing various jobs. He decides that he will have them walk through the room single file and he will count them one by one. His two royal assistants will also count them.
The counting begins but the king gets interrupted by his daughter and loses track. He allows his royal assistants to continue counting and they are marking down things as they count. When they get to the end, one royal assistant reports that he has found there are 23 groups of 2 and one left over. The king does not accept this answer. The other royal assistant reports that he found 9 groups of 5 with two left over. The king also does not like this answer.
He decides to let his daughter try to figure it out and she is able to get the commissioners to stand in groups of 10. There are 4 groups of 10 with 7 left over. She quickly shows the kings how easy it is for her to see that is 47 by counting by tens and ones.
I love using this book for kids learning to count collections because of the way the daughter arranges the commissioners into groups of 10. This story seems to really resonate with young children especially since it is the young girl who figures out the easiest way to explain it to her father.
Here are a few pictures from when I used this story recently with third graders. The focus this time is on equality.
We started by recording equations on the board that represented each person's answer using multiplication and addition.
so it also has a list of suggested activities at the back. These books also tend to go in and out of print but the used market is quite consistent and the quality is usually great.In this book the king decides he needs to count all the commissioners he has doing various jobs. He decides that he will have them walk through the room single file and he will count them one by one. His two royal assistants will also count them.
The counting begins but the king gets interrupted by his daughter and loses track. He allows his royal assistants to continue counting and they are marking down things as they count. When they get to the end, one royal assistant reports that he has found there are 23 groups of 2 and one left over. The king does not accept this answer. The other royal assistant reports that he found 9 groups of 5 with two left over. The king also does not like this answer.He decides to let his daughter try to figure it out and she is able to get the commissioners to stand in groups of 10. There are 4 groups of 10 with 7 left over. She quickly shows the kings how easy it is for her to see that is 47 by counting by tens and ones.
I love using this book for kids learning to count collections because of the way the daughter arranges the commissioners into groups of 10. This story seems to really resonate with young children especially since it is the young girl who figures out the easiest way to explain it to her father.
Here are a few pictures from when I used this story recently with third graders. The focus this time is on equality.
We started by recording equations on the board that represented each person's answer using multiplication and addition.
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| Here are the different ways the royal assistants and the princess counted the commissioners. |
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| We worked together to solve the equations and saw that we ended up with 47 = 47 = 47. This was a great way to kick of a series of lessons on multiplication facts, equality and what to do when there is more than one operation. We then followed this up with my spring themed equality cards level 4 (on sale right now for $2!). |
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