Tag Archives: counting

123 Who Comes Next? for Multicultural Children’s Book Day 2023 #ReadYourWorld #123WhoComesNext?

17 Replies

This Thursday 26 January 2023 is Multicultural Children’s Book Day (MCBD), a day for celebrating diversity in children’s books. I am pleased to be a MCBD reviewer for the fifth time this year; and was delighted to receive a copy of 123 Who Comes Next? from Star Bright Books.

About the Book

Here comes a boy, that is 1. Next comes a girl, that together makes 2. A lady joins the two, which makes them 3. Then comes a dog! How many will they make?

Creatures great and small—and even a vegetable— all come together to help children learn to count 1 to 10 and to recognize numbers. Young readers will be eager to see who comes next, and what number they are. The last page, of course, is the most surprising and fun to all. Artist Amy Matsushita-Beal presents a simple and delightful counting book of diverse characters. The whimsical details on each character add another layer of playfulness for young children.

  • Board Book / Recommended Ages 2-4 years
  • Also available in Haitian Creole/English and Spanish/English bilingual editions.

This delightful counting board book of diverse characters will be available in May 2023. It was created for a Haitian Creole book project at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California. School Library Journal (Starred Review) calls it “remarkably clever count book” and “an essential purchase for all collections.”


About the Author/Illustrator

Amy Matsushita-Beal is a freelance illustrator, designer, and hand-lettering artist based in Tokyo. Amy was born and raised in Los Angeles and graduated from the Art Center College of Design. While presented in a variety of styles, Amy’s work tends to focus on people, their intentions, and vibrancy in color and character. 123 Who Comes Next? is Amy’s first book with Star Bright Books. Visit: amymatsushitabeal.com

What I like about 123 Who Comes Next?

This counting book 123 Who Comes Next? is surprisingly delightful. By that, I mean it delights with a surprise at every page turn.

We’re all familiar with books that count from one to ten and know just what to expect. It’s true that this book fulfills those expectations, starting with one friendly boy greeting one friendly girl, adding one more on each page up to ten.

What surprises and delights, both characters and readers, is what is added to each page. The characters’ differing reactions to each newcomer create humour and provide opportunities for discussions of emotions, reactions and reasons for responding so. The minimal text (simply numeral and number word) leaves plenty of room for storytelling.

On the other hand, being able to focus on the numerals and number words helps develop number recognition as well as counting. In addition, having the numerals written on each of the characters in order of their appearance helps to develop one-to-one correspondence, an early number concept just as important as the ability to count.

I won’t give away any more. I’ll just say that this fun book provides many opportunities for language development as well learning beginning number concepts. The inclusion of diverse characters broadens its appeal. It’s a fun one to add to the collection. We can never have too many counting books.

About Multicultural Children’s Book Day

(Information supplied by MCBD)

Multicultural Children’s Book Day 2023 (1/26/22) is in its 10th year! This non-profit children’s literacy initiative was founded by Valarie Budayr and Mia Wenjen; two diverse book-loving moms who saw a need to shine the spotlight on all of the multicultural books and authors on the market while also working to get those books into the hands of young readers and educators.

Ten years in, MCBD’s mission is to raise awareness of the ongoing need to include kids’ books that celebrate diversity in homes and school bookshelves continues. Read about our Mission & History HERE.

MCBD 2023 is honored to be Supported by these Medallion Sponsors!

FOUNDER’S CIRCLE: Mia Wenjen (Pragmaticmom) and Valarie Budayr’s (Audreypress.com)

🏅 Super Platinum Sponsor: Author Deedee Cummings and Make A Way Media

🏅 Platinum Sponsors: Language Lizard Bilingual Books in 50+ Languages 

🏅 Gold Sponsors: Interlink Books, Publisher Spotlight 

🏅 Silver Sponsors: Cardinal Rule Press,  Lee & Low, Barefoot Books, Kimberly Gordon Biddle

🏅 Bronze Sponsors: Vivian Kirkfield, Patrice McLaurin , Quarto Group, Carole P. Roman, Star Bright Books, Redfin.com, Redfin Canada, Bay Equity Home Loans, Rent.com, Title Forward

Poster Artist:  Lisa Wee

Classroom Kit Poster: Led Bradshaw

MCBD 2023 is honored to be Supported by these Author Sponsors!

Authors: Sivan Hong, Amanda Hsiung-Blodgett, Josh Funk , Stephanie M. Wildman, Gwen Jackson, Diana Huang, Afsaneh Moradian, Kathleen Burkinshaw, Eugenia Chu, Jacqueline Jules, Alejandra Domenzain, Gaia Cornwall, Ruth Spiro, Evelyn Sanchez-Toledo, Tonya Duncan Ellis, Kiyanda and Benjamin Young/Twin Powers Books, Kimberly Lee , Tameka Fryer Brown, Talia Aikens-Nuñez, Marcia Argueta Mickelson, Kerry O’Malley Cerra, Jennie Liu, Heather Murphy Capps, Diane Wilson, Sun Yung Shin, Shannon Gibney, John Coy, Irene Latham and Charles Waters, Maritza M Mejia, Lois Petren, J.C. Kato and J.C.², CultureGroove, Lindsey Rowe Parker, Red Comet Press, Shifa Saltagi Safadi, Nancy Tupper Ling, Deborah Acio, Asha Hagood, Priya Kumari, Chris Singleton, Padma Venkatraman, Teresa Robeson, Valerie Williams-Sanchez and Valorena Publishing, Martha Seif Simpson, Rochelle Melander, Alva Sachs, Moni Ritchie Hadley, Gea Meijering, Frances Díaz Evans, Michael Genhart, Angela H. Dale, Courtney Kelly, Queenbe Monyei, Jamia Wilson, Charnaie Gordon, Debbie Ridpath Ohi, Debbie Zapata, Jacquetta Nammar Feldman, Natasha Yim, Tracy T. Agnelli, Kitty Feld, Anna Maria DiDio, Ko Kim, Shachi Kaushik 

MCBD 2023 is Honored to be Supported by our CoHosts and Global CoHosts!

MCBD 2023 is Honored to be Supported by theseMedia Partners!

Check out MCBD’s Multicultural Books for Kids Pinterest Board!

📌 FREE RESOURCES from Multicultural Children’s Book Day

📌 Register for the MCBD Read Your World Virtual Party

Join us on Thursday, January 26, 2023, at 9 pm EST for the 10th annual Multicultural Children’s Book Day Read Your World Virtual Party!

This epically fun and fast-paced hour includes multicultural book discussions, addressing timely issues, diverse book recommendations, & reading ideas.

We will be giving away a 10-Book Bundle during the virtual party plus Bonus Prizes as well! *** US and Global participants welcome. **

Follow the hashtag #ReadYourWorld to join the conversation, and connect with like-minded parts, authors, publishers, educators, organizations, and librarians. We look forward to seeing you all on January 26, 2023, at our virtual party!}

Stone-stacking #99WordStories

39 Replies

This week at the Carrot Ranch, Charli Mills challenged writers to In 99 words (no more, no less), write a story that features stone-stacking. How does the activity fit into a story? Who is involved? What is the tone? Do the stones have special meaning? Go where the prompt leads!

I tried all week to find a fitting ending to my story beginning but couldn’t get anything I was hoping for to fit. I have ended up with ninety-nine though, so I hope it works, at least a little.

Stacking Stones

Active children were everywhere — throwing, skipping, climbing, swinging, laughing, playing. But over in the garden, on the gravel path, one child was stacking stones.

“What’s he doing?” a visiting teacher asked.

“Jack? Counting stones. He’s been doing it for days now. At the end of playtime, he tells me how many he stacked.”

“Why?”

His teacher shrugged. “He likes counting, I guess.”

“Is he okay, I mean, you know —”

“Oh, yes. He’s completely fine. He just wants to see how high he can count.”

“How high has he got?”

“Twelve.”

“How far does he want to get?”

“Ninety-nine.”

Thank you blog post

Thank you for reading. I appreciate your feedback. Please share your thoughts.

Note: The collection of stories made in response to the previous prompt Memorials, including mine, can be read at the Carrot Ranch.

Let’s count 1000 pancakes for Pancake Day! – #readilearn

15 Replies

Next week sees us here in Australia bid farewell to summer and welcome in the cooler (we — or I — hope) days of Autumn. Next Tuesday is not only 1 March, but also Pancake Day, which means it’s only six weeks until Easter and, for many of us, school holidays.

When I completed the recent audit of readilearn lessons in teaching number by mapping them to the Australian Curriculum, I realised that we were missing lessons in numbers over one hundred. As children in Year Two learn about numbers up to one thousand, I realised there was a gap to fill. I started by making a lesson called 1000 Pancakes.

I chose pancakes for three reasons:

  1. Pancake Day is next week. However, the lesson can be used at any time of the year; it makes no reference to Pancake Day.
  2. Pancakes are popular with children as well as adults.
  3. Pancakes in stacks are easy to visualise.

The lesson 1000 Pancakes gives children the opportunity to visualise 1000 pancakes by comparing the quantity to 10 and 100. It is a lesson ready-to-teach on the interactive whiteboard, a readilearn readilesson.

In the lesson, children count pancakes

  • in 1s to 10
  • in 10s to 100
  • and in 100s to 1000.

One thousand is a lot of pancakes.

Continue reading: Let’s count 1000 pancakes for Pancake Day! – readilearn

developing understanding of number with three new resources

Developing understanding of number with three new resources – #readilearn

27 Replies

An understanding of number is crucial to navigating our complex world. It is something we use everyday whether we are aware of it or not. From things as seemingly simple as matching the number of socks to our number of feet, to scheduling our day, through to more complex activities like balancing our budget, an understanding of number and mathematics is involved.

It always saddens me when people say, ‘Oh I can’t do maths’, especially when those people are young people. I think a lot of the inability and fear was learned. I know it was for me. Perhaps that is why I am on a mission to make learning in maths enjoyable and meaningful. It doesn’t have to be fearfully abstract and complex if we build strong foundations in the early years.

There are already well over one hundred mathematics resources in the readilearn collection, and this week I have added three more. Two of the resources are interactive lessons ready to teach on the interactive whiteboard in the classroom or, for those still teaching online, via screen sharing software. The third is a printable resource. All support your teaching and are open-ended and adaptable to the needs of you and your learners.

Repeating Patterns

Let’s Make Patterns is designed for teaching and reviewing repeating patterns on the interactive whiteboard. Patterns are an important part of mathematics. Learning about patterns with objects helps children understand the patterns upon which our decimal number system is based.

Continue reading: Developing understanding of number with three new resources – readilearn

Caps off for maths!

24 Replies

This post is republished from the readilearn blog.

Hi, and welcome again to the readilearn blog. I hope you’ve had a good week.

Rarely, when the costs of education are being calculated, is the contribution made by teachers from their own pockets acknowledged. It is not very well publicised that many teachers spend a lot of their own money resourcing their classrooms, which would be far less interesting places if teachers refused to contribute in this way.

Today I demonstrate that not all resources need be expensive. A versatile, free, and readily available resource is the humble bottle cap or lid, which  is often discarded, but can fulfill a number of functions in the classroom.

collection

It doesn’t take long to gather an extensive collection of lids even on your own. But ask your children to bring in lids from home and the collection builds even quicker.

Lids have many uses.

Children can, for example:

Sort by colour or size

sort-colour sort-size

Order according to size – diameter or height

order-diameter order-height

Make patterns – repeating or growing

growing-pattern repeating-ab-pattern

Count – by ones, twos or fives

count-in-onescount-in-2s count-in-5s

Learn to subitise, and discover conservation of number

conservation

Compare, add, substract and share

compare

Measure length and mass

measure-length measure-mass

Use for collage or craft, or as tokens when playing games

collage snakes-and-ladders

These are just a few ideas. What other uses have you found for lids? Please share in the comments below.

Look what's new

What’s new – Uploaded this week!

These ideas and others are  now available in a free maths resource Caps off for maths.

caps-off-for-maths

have-you-used

Getting to know readilearn resources

Snakes and Ladders is a popular game and great for maths groups. With some guidance from an adult, the game can be used to stimulate mathematical thinking alongside practice of computations. The readilearn resource Snakes and Ladders – An activity for maths groups provides suggestions that can be given to an assistant to maximise learning opportunities while playing the game.

snakes-and-ladders-printable-preview

Please contact me if you have any questions. I welcome your feedback, especially suggestions for improvements to existing resources and ideas for new ones.

Remember, if you haven’t yet subscribed, an introductory discount of 20% is available to all who subscribe during 2016. Just use the coupon code welcome1 at the checkout to receive your discount.

I’ll see you next week. In the meantime, enjoy the weekend.

Thank you

Thank you for reading.

Happy teaching and learning,

Norah

You can contact me:

via email hello@readilearn.com.au

via the Contact page

on Twitter @readilearn or @NorahColvin

on Facebook @readilearnteachingresources

on my other blog NorahColvin.com

I invite you to rate and review any resources you use, and to share information about readilearn on social media.

All images in this post are copyright Norah Colvin.

About Bullfrog’s Billabong

10 Replies

This post is republished from the readilearn blog.

Hi, and welcome again to the readilearn blog. I hope you’ve had a good week. Thank you for your interest in readilearn. I apologise to those who have experienced difficulty in applying the discount coupon codes at the checkout. Know that I will honour the coupon offer with a PayPal discount refund if your subscription goes through with payment in full. I appreciate your persistence and patience while we improve flow with the payment system. Please contact me if you experience any difficulties.

Bullfrog's Billabong - cover

Getting to know readilearn resources

In this post I discuss the Bullfrog’s Billabong suite of resources.

Bullfrog’s Billabong is a cumulative story which takes place at a fictitious Australian Billabong. Bullfrog is the first to arrive at the billabong. He decides it would be a great place to live and makes it his home. Each day, more animals arrive at the billabong. They too think it would be a good home and, after asking permission, decide to stay. Unfortunately, as the billabong becomes more and more crowded, the animals have difficulty in getting along. Their racket attracts another visitor who also sees the potential of the billabong as a home.

The story includes mathematical concepts including counting, growing patterns and days of the week.

The repetitive structure supports children’s reading and encourages them to make predictions based upon obvious patterns involving counting and days of the week. Their knowledge of narrative structure encourages prediction of possible events and conclusion. The end may surprise some children and they may or may not approve of the author’s choice. A discussion of alternative ways to conclude the story could lead to some interesting writing, and an understanding that what happens in stories is a choice made by the author.

While the animals will be familiar to Australian children, the story provides a great opportunity for children from other countries to find out about them too.

I hope you and your children enjoy reading the story and using the resources.

The suite of existing resources includes:

Bullfrog’s Billabong – an estory (The story can be displayed on the whiteboard for reading to, with, or by the children.)

Bullfrog’s Billabong – Covered cloze (This interactive resource for use on the whiteboard is great for teaching effective reading strategies. For best effect, it should be used before any other Bullfrog’s Billabong resources.)

Bullfrog’s Billabong – Cloze – How to use this resource  (Refer to this resource for suggested use of the covered cloze interactive resource. For more information about covered cloze as a teaching strategy, refer to Covered Cloze – teaching effective reading strategies)

Bullfrog’s Billabong – Covered cloze Sampler (This is a free one-page sneak peek at how the interactivity works before making a commitment to purchase a subscription.)

 Look what's new

What’s new – uploaded this week!

I have been working on new resources to support and complement the existing Bullfrog’s Billabong resources.

This week I have added three new resources to the collection:

Bullfrog’s Billabong – The facts (This information sheet explains what a billabong is and verifies that all the story’s animals may live in a billabong, though possibly not the same one.)

Bullfrog’s Billabong – the next chapter (Children draw and write what they think happens next on this printable sheet.)

Bullfrog’s Billabong – Days of the week (Use these three sets of printable cards when teaching or revising the days of the week. There are A5 cards for use with the whole class, and smaller cards for use by individuals or small groups.)

© Norah Colvin

© Norah Colvin

I am working on other resources to add to the suite, including presentation of the story as a play. There is also a set of animals to print that can be used to make pop stick puppets for a performance. Watch for these, and others, coming soon.

I hope you and your children enjoy using these resources. I had fun making them and thinking about the responses of children.

Please contact me if you have any questions. I welcome your feedback, especially suggestions for improvements to existing resources and ideas for new ones.

Introductory discount

Remember, if you haven’t yet subscribed, an introductory discount of 20% is available to all who subscribe this year. Just use the coupon code welcome2 at the checkout to receive your discount.

ncblog welcome2

I’ll see you next week. In the meantime, enjoy the weekend.

Thank you

Thank you for reading.

Happy teaching and learning,

Norah

 

You can contact me:

via email hello@readilearn.com.au

via the Contact page

on Twitter @readilearn or @NorahColvin

on Facebook @readilearnteachingresources

on my other blog NorahColvin.com

I invite you to rate and review any resources you use, and to share information about readilearn on social media.