Math – One Chapter

Walter’s Wonderful Web by Tim Hopgood

5 stars Children’s Picture Book

Walter just wants his spider webs to look just like his friends. His webs are always wibbly-wobbly and when the wind blows, they blow away while his friends webs are perfect, and they can withstand any wind condition. It’s not that Walter doesn’t try because boy, does he try! Walter construct web after web, creating this shape and that shape but when the wind blows, they all come tumbling down. Ahhh!

Finally, Walter decides to put all of the shapes that he has created into one huge web creating a masterpiece and it’s amazing! Circles, triangles, rectangles, squares, and diamonds are woven into this beautiful work of art, but will it be strong enough for the wind?

What a fun, entertaining story about a determined spider and how he tries to solve his problem. I enjoyed how he used all the different shapes to construct his webs and how he continued to create the webs until he got the right combination. Walter is a big black spider, and you can see him smiling and his disappointment throughout the book.

In Walter’s final masterpiece, I had my grandson try to find all the different shapes Walter incorporated which was fun. Cute story and educational too. 5 stars

Invent-a-Pet by Vicky Fang

4.5 stars Children’s Picture Book

Is it extraordinary? Katie wants a pet that is unique: something extraordinary. When they can’t find something at a pet store, her mother brings her a pet-making machine so Katie can make her own pet. The only problem is, Katie has to figure out how the machine works. There are three (3) input slots but what do they mean?

Katie tries all kinds of combinations to figure out what they mean as she creates all different kinds of pets.

Finally, Katie begins to understand what each of the different input slots mean and she can then put in the right item to get the correct pet that she wants.

What Katie ends up getting will put a smile on your face after you see everything that she has created.

Our grandson liked this book, he kept reaching for it when we’d read together. He’s 4 years old and I had to explain some of the book to him as I think some of the concepts were difficult for him to understand at first. Katie does the trial-and-error concept as she tries to figure out the different input slots so that part of the book gets a bit confusing as she tests each slot. After a few readings, he understood it and would point to the different input slots on the pages as I was reading it as each animal would come out a bit different. When an incident occurs at Katie’s house, we had to investigate that on our own as the book doesn’t mention what happened and I liked that as we flipped through the book to see what had changed on the pages to cause the incident to occur. It’s a cute book and the illustrations are busy, but they do tell the story. My grandson loved the book 5 stars from him and 4 stars from me – 4.5 stars

Shape Up, Construction Trucks by Victoria Allenby

5 stars Children’s Picture Book

I have a grandson who loves construction trucks so this one was perfect for him. With realistic pictures, this book shows a variety of vehicles in realistic settings. From a dump truck, to a crane, to a lifting hook, to a road roller, there are just a few of the different vehicles that are included inside this book.

Each vehicle gets a two-page spread and, on the right side, beside that picture, there are some simple words which rhyme that connect that vehicle to a shape that is found on that vehicle. They have created a larger diagram of that shape underneath the words and they have also outlined the shape on the vehicle so the reader can make the connection to the written words. A fun and simple book but the learning is important and if you can get them to see this now, that’s great! I do wish there could have been a few pages that combined a multitude of shapes on one vehicle so the readers could see that. I like how you can use this for just looking at the trucks or for higher learning. 4.5 stars

Example: Dump Truck has a triangle on its truck bed. “Dump truck, Dump truck, Coming through, I spy a triangle, How about you?”

2 x 2 = Boo! A Set of Spooky Multiplication Stories by Loreen Leedy

A cute picture book about math featuring some Halloween characters. I liked the way the math facts are presents in the book, the repetition of the same number so the child can see a pattern taking place and I liked how the illustrations reinforce that same scenario. I like how each chapter is devoted to one specific number. The way that the characters try to explain multiplication is not confusing but give the reader a visual, a number sentence and an explanation. Great illustrations also. This book only covers the multiplication facts from 1-5 so don’t expect something like 1 x 7 because the highest this book covers is 5 x 5. This is not a scary book, if you are worried about that.