Infuse Mathematical Thinking into Your Classroom Library: My Favorite Children’s Literature to use in the Math Workshop
Sarah Picard

Some of my favorite books to real aloud to first and second graders involve number concepts. I have listed a few of my favorites below.

Two of Everything by Lily Toy Hong

Two of Everything by Lily Toy Hong helps children understand the concept of doubling. In this folktale, Mr. and Mrs. Haktak use a lucky pot to double their meager earnings. Whatever they put into the pot gets doubled. Students can investigate and predict the earning as the teachers reads it aloud. They will be cheering the Haktaks along until the moment when Mrs. Haktak falls into the pot herself and two Mrs. Haktaks emerge. Teachers and children alike delight in Mr. Haktak’s solution to this very unique problem.

Ms. Rhumphius by:Barbara Cooney
The Giving Tree by: Shel Silverstein

Both of these popular children’s books teach children about the passage of time. Barbara Cooney’s book chronicles the life of Miss Rhumphis and Shel Silverstein’s pictures and narrative follow the life of a tree. The illustrations and text teach children about the concept of days, weeks, years, and the affect of the passing of time. These stories helped my students understand why we kept a calendar in the classroom – to look forward on our days, weeks, and months together, and to look back on all we had accomplished in a year.

Emily’s First 100 Days of School by: Rosemary Wells

Beloved children’s author Rosemary Wells sets kids and teachers up for the count up to the 100th day of school with this book. Many teachers use this book during the first week of school to get the students thinking about the concept of numbers. The main character Emily, and her classmates, think about ways each number can be used in the word (on their third day of school Emily writes to her teacher that she noticed her school bus is No. 3, on the fourth day of school she learns about the four corners in square dancing). You can take this book out again and again throughout the year. Celebrate the 100th day of school and remind the children of all numbers they have seen in the world.

Math Curse by John Scieszka

This book pushes some of our older mathematicians to think like the teacher in the book, Mrs. Fibonnaci. She tells her students, “You know, you can think of almost everything as a math problem.” What follows are pages and pages of math problems the narrator creates as he goes about his day as a student in her class. This book will stretch your brain and give all kids a chance to see how numbers are used ever single day in the world.