Story Time Monday: Number Books

Can it really only be Tuesday?  Since my colleague in the library is on vacation --hope you said "hello" to Bar Harbor for me, Rhonda!-- I worked Thursday and Friday last week and Monday through Wednesday this week.  I've had classes most days including subbing in technology and PE classes, so it's been a busy.  Today I called out "Have a great weekend!" as the 7th graders left class; oops!  Not quite yet.

I haven't written about Story Time Mondays so far this year because I've been repeating lessons I used in past years.  But recently I ran across this book in our collections which inspired me to focus this week's Story Time on number books.

More Than One by Miriam Schlein and Donald Crews starts out simple enough.  An illustration of a blue whale swimming in the ocean under a big yellow sun is captioned:   One Sun, One Whale.  But on the next page we find the question:  Can one ever be more than one?  and on the pages which follow the question is answered.  Yes, one pair of shoes is two shoes.  One dozen of eggs is twelve eggs.  And  then we're told that sometimes one can even have a different number of the same thing, such as one family which can be two people, three people, four people and even more.  And sometimes you can't even count how many things one has, such as the number of birds in one flock of birds, or the number of grains of sands in one beach.  What a cool book!  

I followed it up with two quick reads, both using the "take away one" form of counting backwards and both using rhyming words and strong rhythms.  

Paul Strickland's Ten Terrible Dinosaurs is one that I used to read to Paul.  He loved it and so did my little preschoolers and Kindergarteners.  The fun starts with, "Ten terrible dinosaurs standing in a line soon began to push and shove and then there were nine..."

And who doesn't enjoy acting out Eileen Christelow's Five Little Monkeys?  Forget the sappy YouTube cartoon versions of the song and recite the verses boldly with a nice strong beat, shaking your finger strongly on the chorus of "No more monkeys jumping on the bed!," and everyone will have fun with it as they count down from five.