Monday Math Literature Volume 28

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If you missed last week's post about a great book to challenge early finishers, you can check it out here!

Recently, I have found that Amy Axelrod who is the author of one of my favorite books for teaching time, Pigs on a Blanket: Fun With Math and Time has an entire series of Pigs will be Pigs books that are great stories that also deal with math content.  I have been on an ordering frenzy since this summer and have started using these books with students.  Here are a few of my new favorites

Pigs at Odds : Fun with Math and Games

In this story the pig family heads of to the carnival for some fun on rides and playing games.  It is a great light way to introduce concepts about fair games, luck, chances of winning,  and odds.  The last page of the book goes into a definition of probability and talks about what makes a game fair.  There are some follow up questions based on the story that are a great way to see what students' current levels of understanding around probability are.  The book also shows the pigs spending money so I have also used this story with students who are working on money.  It is fun to keep track of the money they have spent so far.  I have used this book in grades 2-4.

Pigs on the Move : Fun with Math and Travel

In this story, the Pig family is traveling for Christmas and misses their flight.  Being a mellow pig family, they hop a plane that is scheduled for several detours.  They finally make it to their destination after traveling for quite a few hours.  Mr. Pig's watch doesn't seem to match that of the Taxi driver's when they arrive at their destination.  This story has been a great follow up to the one I reviewed a few weeks ago about time zones.  Because the students I used this book with had already been introduced to the idea of time zones, they really understood what was going on with the clocks not matching Mr. Pig's watch.  This book is also great because it is a good way to look at reading and writing numbers in the thousands and even adding numbers of this size if your students are ready.  There is also an element of proportional reasoning and some rate problems you could get into with the relationship between speed, time and distance.  There are many levels of math concepts in this story and I have used in in grades 2-6.

Have you used any of the pigs will be pigs books in your classroom?  Head to volume 29 to see a few more of my favorites!