Books You Can Count On

I'm excited to tell you a little about my Books You Can Count On workshop!  This will be the first post in a series based on the workshop.  I hope you find ideas and inspiration for your classroom!

Books aren’t just for reading!  In the workshop, I prompt you to see how your favorite classroom books are much more than just language & literacy.   Books You Can Count On  was created to help you discover ways to integrate children’s literature to achieve your Mathematics standards, too. 

Today, I'm going to share activities based on several of my favorite books that are most likely in your reading area when school begins.

 

 

 

As you can see, the theme of these books is all about cookies!  These books have wonderful lessons about sharing, learning names, and more.  But have you thought about using these treasured books to help teach math skills?  Basic standards such as...

• The child will organize, represent, and build knowledge of quantity and number.
• The child will recognize numerals and use counting as part of play and as a means for determining quantity
• The child will match numerals to sets of objects with the same number, 0-10
• The child will describe sets as having more, less, same as/equal
• The child will quickly recognize and name how many items are in a set

Here's a Cookie Counting activity the children in your class will really enjoy!  It gives them a fun, hands-on experience while they work on math skills. Does it get any better than that?

 

Putting this activity together took me less than 20 minutes.  I cut brown paper circles with a two inch circle punch and programmed them on one side with numerals or number words.  I decorated the other side with random chocolate chip dots.  Next, I cut circles from tan craft foam.  As soon as I poured a bag of tiny brown pom pom "chocolate chips" into the cookie jar, the class was ready to start counting!  I found the cookie jar awhile ago at a dollar store but any bowl or container can hold the cookies and chocolate morsels for this game.

To do the activity, students will pick a paper cookie and read the numeral or number word. Then, they'll count out the correct number of pom pom chocolate chips and place them on the foam cookie shape.  Your students will absolutely LOVE counting the chocolate chips!

 

This is a counting exercise you can do with a small group and then place in your independent math center for the kids to do on their own.  

 

Here's another cookie themed activity to go along with any of the books above.  This one uses a small baking sheet and a package of the "Cookies & Milk" diecuts from the Dollar Tree.

 

First, I made a very simple counting mat using a cute font and cookie clip art. 

 

On the glasses of milk from the Dollar Tree diecut package, I placed number stickers.  You could also program the milk glasses with number words, tally marks, ten frames, or sets of dots.  It's up to you! 

  

Then I used a circle punch to cut small discs from the big cookie diecuts.  Each large cookie diecut yielded three smaller cookies.  I did this so I'd have enough cookies for making larger number sets and to ensure they'd all fit on the baking sheet.  But you could also just use the big cookies as they come in the package.

For this game, I had my class working on matching the correct number of cookies to the numeral on the milk glass as you see below.

Here's a look at the magnet buttons on back of the diecut pieces.  I put these on so everything would stick to the baking sheet and not slide around too much.

 

Write it in your plans to read one or more of these cookie themed books when school starts and then watch your class play, work, and learn!

 

Teaching math concepts with your favorite children's literature. 

 

It's what Books You Can Count On is all about!

Be sure to so you won't miss the next post in the series!