On the Fourth Day of Christmas...

...my true love gave to me...Math Books!

I just got home.  Fifteen hours of school today.  And yet, I am still blogging.  Why?  Because I am on a kick to promote math!  We had a Family Math Night at school tonight.  I am one of two math teachers at my school and we presented to our amazing community about our math program, how to help, what to say to kids when they get stuck with homework or find the homework too easy, etc..  One conversation that came out of my session was how our society thinks about math.  We would be hard pressed to find someone stand up in a crowd and say, "I can't read!"  It just isn't done.  However, it is acceptable to share that we, "...can't do math!"  And of course it isn't true that we can't do math.  We do math all the time.  But think about the message it sends to our little ones when they hear the adults in their life admit that they can't do math.

So to help stop this anti-math culture, we talked about how to create a love for math.  How most of the time it is not about getting the right answer, but working hard through a process.  Now, as I said, it has been a long day so I will stop all the chatter.  I am going to bed.  But here are some books to help spread the word to your little ones.  No ages for these books, just read 'em!

Math Curse by Jon Scieszka

A little boy starts thinking about math and just can't stop.  He has the math curse!  Everything in his life turns into a math problem.  So funny and appropriate for those who know a little or a lot about math.  I got about half the jokes and I still enjoyed it.


Math-terpiece by Greg Tang

Greg Tang makes lots of books about math.  Math in art, math poetry, math riddles, and lots more!  Pick up any of them for a lot of fun ways to think about math.








The Dot and the Line by Norton Juster



He wrote The Phantom Tollbooth and I just love the way his brain works.  The Dot and the Line tells the story of a line who fell in love with a dot but she was head-over-heels for a squiggle.  The line tries everything to be what she is looking for but learns in the end that it is better to just be yourself.