Skittles Riddles

Author:  Barbara Barbieri McGrath, 2000, Scholastic
Illustrator:  Roger Glass

Why are Skittles Original Bite Size Candies always happy?
BECAUSE THEY'RE NEVER BLUE!  :)

What's not to love about Skittles?  These delicious fruit chews are a favorite of many Americans, including both children and adults.  Now, teachers can use this popular candy to teach math!  In the book Skittles Riddles, children learn addition, subtraction, and fractions using Skittles.  This idea is great for a group activity, but make sure to give students a fresh set of Skittles after they have handled them.  Hershey's also makes a book about their famous chocolate bars and math, so take your pick.  I remember using this book when I was in school, and I'm sure it will never go out of style.  After all, who doesn't like to mix food and math?

 

Sir Cumference and All the King's Tens

Author:  Cindy Neuschwander, 2009, Scholastic
Illustrator:  Wayne Geehan

Want to learn a way to teach your students how to group numbers in sets of 10?  Look no further than this modern tale of a medieval noble who groups party guests in order to count them.  In Sir Cumference and All the King's Tens, Sir Cumference and his wife, Lady Di of Ameter, throw a surprise party for King Arthur.  So many people arrive (9,000+) that the hosts have no idea how to count them for lunch!  They finally figure out how to arrange the guests in groups of 10, 100, and 1000.  This makes their counting much easier and more accurate than a very good guess. 

I thought this book was a good teaching tool for the math concept of grouping.  We all know some children who have difficulty understanding how numbers fit together to make bigger numbers, and I thought the illustrations in this book helped tremendously.  The story line was funny, and the pictures added humor to the text.  I was a little confused at first why a book with a character named "Sir Cumference" dealt with grouping, and I would have thought circles would have had a prominent role in the story.  Regardless, this book is a fun way to teach a necessary math concept.