Almighty Dad | A stay at home dad blog

Math doesn’t have to be daily lessons of worksheets, word problems, and scratch paper.  Math can be fun.  Yes, I know that sounds like a third grade teacher desperately trying to convince her students that they aren’t in a math class.  The truth is though that Greg Tang has written a series of children’s books that can double as bedtime reading and math lessons.  He has successfully illustrated how kids can recognize patterns in everyday objects.  Kids, for their part, think they are just counting grapes or leaves when, in fact, they are learning to group things and to quickly count without the use of fingers and toes.  His books are both genuinely fun children’s books and seriously effective math lessons.  

I own two of his books, Math For All Seasons and The Grapes of Math.  There are 8 books in total so I can’t vouch for the other 6, but the two I own are excellent.  Each page presents a riddle and an illustration of objects.  The idea is that you read the riddle while your kid studies the image.  For instance, this is an excerpt from Math for all Seasons, intended for 4-8 year olds:   

“Autumn’s colors bright and bold,  

Orange red and lots of gold! 

  

For trees is the final show.   

Coming soon is winter’s snow. 

  

Just how many leaves are there?   

Find a pattern in the air. 

  

Make groups of five and you will see,  

An ending happy as can be!” 

Here’s the illustration that goes along with it:

You can see how simple it is, yet you can also see how it gently prods kids into thinking differently.  The Grapes of Math is for older kids and is more complicated, but it uses the same technique.  I read to my boys every night at bedtime.  Before we hit the sack I allow them to pick the bedtime reading.  Believe it or not, they’ve selected these Greg Tang books just as many times as they have any other book.  That proves to me that they don’t see this as math, they see it as a fun game like Where’s Waldo or a matching game.  Little do they know, gasp!  That they are learning!

Note: Nobody asked me to write this endorsement, and I didn’t get anything for doing it.  It’s just a couple of books I own which I like.

Related posts:

1. Singapore Math: a Better Method
2. Developing Math Skill in Kids
3. Free Math Worksheets: Solving the Resource Problem
4. Books to Read to Boys
5. The Irrational Fear of Math