Number Literacy: Kick Off the New Year with 10 Great Books that Celebrate Math
Kohl Children’s Museum’s Math Counts program introduces children to the wonderful world of math in a fun, informative way. We start off each program reading a book before doing fun activities together that deal with the basic building blocks of math: sets and patterns, counting, numerosity, geometry – even algebraic thinking!
Literacy can be a great connective tool for exploring and celebrating subjects like math. While reading a book, a child may recognize the repetition of words and begin to recite the story or make predictions on what happens next - this is the child practicing patterning! Through their everyday routines, children are also using early math skills, which can be simple things like counting food, noticing shapes like a stop sign, or patterns on their clothing.
I’ve collected 10 great books and activities to introduce children to early math skills while they enjoy great stories, too! For some of the books, I’ve linked easy activities from the Museum’s At Home Zone that you can do along with the story to practice concepts introduced in each book. Welcome to the world of math thinking!
1. A Pair of Socks by Stuart J. Murphy: Sorting can be done with anything around your home. This book is great way for children to become more familiar with sorting. Using the activity you can start simple, like sorting socks by pairs and then make it a little more complex by sorting socks by color. (At Home Zone idea!)
2. Just How Long Can a Long String Be? by Keith Baker: Measuring with a ruler can be complicated. This book invites children to see measurement in a non-standard method by using string. (At Home Zone idea!)
3. Pattern Bugs by Trudy Nicholas Harris: This is a great book to introduce children to patterning. Children will catch on to the repetition as the story is told and may guess what comes next in the pattern of words. Get your body moving and make a pattern with your body with this activity. (At Home Zone idea!)
4. Actual Size by Steve Jenkins: How big or small things are can be hard to put in perspective for young children. This book is a great introduction to spatial thinking through direct size comparison. In this story you will see images of the actual size of different animal body parts. They can see just how or small or big they are when they compare their height to other people in their home or the animal body parts in the story. (At Home Zone idea!)
5. Dog’s Colorful Day by Emma Dodd: A great book to start counting in a fun colorful way.
6. Five Creatures by Emily Jenkins: Ever thought about how you could sort your family members or friends? In this story, a little girl who begins to sort her family in to different categories. This is a great book to use for sorting and dialogue for different ways to sort your family. (At Home Zone idea!)
7. Mouse Shapes by Ellen Stoll Walsh: Shapes can be fun! This is a great book for children to learn new shapes while also discovering how some animals that can be made with different shapes.
8. A Pig is Big by Douglas Florian: Telling a child she is 3 feet tall may not mean as much as telling her she is as tall as a dog. This book will allow children to see “bigger” and “smaller” in different ways.
9. Ten Black Dots by Donald Crews: Counting can be done in many different ways. This book allows children to count while exploring where black dots can be found. The activity will have children counting while exploring nature! (At Home Zone idea!)
10. Balancing Act by Ellen Stoll Walsh: Different methods can be used for measuring. This book measures the weight of animals! It is also a great way for children to see that rulers are not the only tools we use to measure things.
And that’s not all: Here’s another great list of books that support the development of spatial skills in children, an important pre-math skill!
While doing some of these activities and reading the books, children may pick up on a different math skill or even add to the one you are already doing, like patterning and measurement combined. Try these activities and challenge your children. Adapting the activities to make them more personable allows the child to relate and be more invested in any activity. Pick one of your children’s favorite books and try to create a new math activity and put it to the test!
Remember, Math Counts takes place approximately every other Friday from 2:30 – 4 p.m. at the Museum. Check our website for the programming calendar for details. I’ll count on seeing you around!
--Teresa Osorio, Museum Education Specialist
