Author: Cindy Neuschwander
Illustrator: Liza Woodruff
Genre: Picture Book
This
week, I read Amanda Bean’s Amazing Dream.
This was a cute mathematical picture book about the benefits of
multiplication. Amanda Bean absolutely loves to count. She counts everything
all the time, no matter where she is. Amanda Bean goes to the library to check
out some books. She sees all the books and decides to count them all. She
counts all of them and then realizes that the library is closing. She starts to
see that this counting habit is getting a little tedious. When she gets home,
she goes to sleep. She dreams that there are many sheep. She wants to count them
all. They are each on a bicycle and she wants to count the total number of
wheels. Then each sheep gets five balls of yarn and she wants to count each one
as well. She gets completely overwhelmed in her dream. She realizes she cannot
count everything and the sheep in her dream suggest she use multiplication. They
explain to her that it is just a faster way of counting. This book uses this
extreme exaggeration of a dream to show Amanda how overwhelming counting can
get and how nice multiplication is.
As
a future math teacher, I would definitely use this book to introduce multiplication.
Often children are
taught how to multiply and jump right in to memorizing multiplication tables.
Rarely are children taught that multiplication is essentially a faster way to
add. This adds a unique story to the concept. I really enjoyed this book and
its amazing illustrations!
Amanda,
ReplyDeleteI had not heard about this book until I read your blog. I love how it shows multiplication as fun and useful. Math can be very overwhelming to a student and it is imperative that you show them that there are easier ways to learn. I agree with you when you say that children are taught to just memorize the multiplication tables and it drives me crazy. They need to understand the process and what it is good for!
Amanda A.
I think this is also a wonderful way to have literature in every subject instead of just English. Rarely (if ever) does a math teacher every read a book to the class. I think this will be a wonderful tool.
ReplyDeleteI absolutely love using books that talk about math in classrooms, because they are often a fun way to introduce what could be a challenging math concept. I think this is the perfect way to begin learning multiplication, because often by the time kids are ready to start the learning process, they are getting tired and overwhelmed by the repetition of the counting process, and are ready for something that makes their lives faster and easier, which is, of course, why we have multiplication to begin with. This will definitely be in my classroom. Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteA great book to teach math concepts. It makes the understanding of math much easier for the students because not only can they relate to Amanda Bean but they can also relate to what she is counting. Great book choice!
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