Mathstart

Everyday activities such as sharing a meal, sorting socks, and getting ready for school can be part of learning math. In the MathStart series, everyday life is the basis for each entertaining story. Simple math concepts are embedded in each story so that young children intuitively understand them. Adults can use the creative suggestions for activities in the back of each book to extend learning opportunities with children. Developmentally appropriate and correlated to school grade levels and the curriculum standards of the National Council of Teachers Of Mathematics, MathStart can give children a head start!

You can start with one little hamster and keep counting past six slinky fish, eight favorite playmates, and more -- all the way up to ten cuddly teddy bears. With buddies, counting is fun!

It's slimy. It's smelly. Its green and it's gooey. It's seaweed soup -- and its Turtle's favorite lunch! Turtle has made enough seaweed soup for everyone. But it looks awful and smells worse! Nobody wants to even taste it. How can they tell Turtle without hurting his feelings? As Turtle serves lunch to his reluctant guests, young readers can learn about matching sets (also called one-to-one correspondence) by keeping track of all the different bowls, cups, spoons, and napkins on the table. Lighthearted art and a surprise ending make this a story readers will eat up.

Bigger, Better, Best! (LEVEL 2: Area) In their family′s new house, Jenny and Jeff are driving their little sister, Jill, crazy. Who has the bigger window? Who has the bigger bedroom? Jenny and Jeff must use a simple geometry concept to calculate area in order to prove once and for all whose room is bigger. Ages 6+

Perry the Penguin needs 9 clams to buy an ice scooter -- but he's not very good at saving. As Perry earns, spends, finds, loses, and borrows clams, a simple line graph demonstrates the concept of negative numbers.

Frog friends, Matty and Moe, are off with a "Ready, Set, Hop!" They both made it to the rock, but who's in the lead? If Matty hopped 5 hops and Moe hopped 2 more hops than Matty, then the score is 5 to 7. But then they're off again. Any child who can add or subtract can build a simple equation, and Matty and Moe make it fun. As readers count along with Stuart J. Murphy and Jon Buller they will sharpen their problem solving skills and find out which frog is the better hopper.

Four kids and their sidekick, Petey the parrot, run a sometimes thriving lemonade stand whose patrons include all kinds of wacky neighbors—even a juggler. They create a bar graph to track the rise and fall of their lemonade sales. Illustrator Tricia Tusa has imbued the story with her delightful sense of humor and has made understanding bar graphs a breeze.