Book Talk Tuesday: Teaching Number Sense

This week I chose a book that focuses on Number Sense. I love using books to teach math and I found a perfect book to use at the beginning of the year when working on number sense with little ones.

Parenting Magazine: Look and Learn Numbers

The pictures in this book are gorgeous and my photos don’t really do them justice.

I love the simple layout of the pages.

The number word, numeral, drawing and photograph are included for all number 1-10.

I love the real photographs because they are so bright and engaging. All kids love animals right?

I use this book whole group and have students volunteer to come up and point to the animals for the class to count. Its amazing how a fun pointer can really motivate kids, lol.

Modeling and practicing one to one correspondence is an important skill to practice daily at the beginning of the year.

As the numbers get larger it may get more difficult to count the animals, so it is great to practice together.

I like to include this book in a math center as well, to use as a reference for students.

I’ve even made “Math Reading” a center during math workshop before with response pages similar to a listening center.

I like that it really encourages students to look carefully at the picture when counting because the animals are not always in a simple arrangement for counting.

If counting animals in the photograph becomes too difficult, I like that struggling students can count the illustration and then go back to the photograph to try to count again.

And there is even a reference page in the back with all of the numbers.

I hope you can use this book with your little mathematicians. And I encourage you to use more books in your math instruction, it helps to engage students in different ways and gives them a reference to go back to to reinforce new concepts.