Math Fables - Lessons that Count

 By Greg Tang
Illustrated by Heather Cahoon

This is a great idea, and my daughter does ask to read it, but in practice it's a little too much in one book.

All the numbers from one to ten are represented, and each number has stories for every possible equation.

 This works well for the first few numbers.  We like to read about the squirrels and divide them up into two and two or one and three.  Great.

But later on, it gets really boring.  Especially nine and ten.  We've never read through the story about the ants.  Two eat watermellon and eight eat cheese.  Three took home bread and seven took home lettuce.  etc. etc. etc. until little hands are all over the book forcefully turning pages to get you to stop.

The rhyming and meter are pretty dreadful.  But seeing as my daughter likes the beginning and it IS actually educational, I give this one a pass.

Bears On Wheels

 By Stan and Jan Berentsain

Not Berenstein, as everyone seemingly used to pronounce it.

This book is amazing!  It teaches basic math!  I wouldn't call it an amazing counting book.  There are better books for that.

 The bears' shirts are different colours and the different vehicles that they ride or drive have different numbers of wheels.  It has 2+2, 1+3, 1+4, 5+5 and a few others.  Nothing incredibly difficult.  It's just a nice visual representation of the concept of adding and is really appealing to preschoolers.

My daughter seems to understand addition and I sincerely believe that this book made a big impact on that development.

Friday Post - Waddingtons "Dix"

Waddingtons "Un Monde Des Jeux - Dix"

I found this at the thrift store and picked it up because my mum used to have a copy.  We never played it properly when I was a kid because we didn't know the rules and nobody sat down and explained it to us.  We lost the box and everything, so my mum got rid of it.

I read the rules when I got it home and it's basically dominoes, but you add to 10.  It says 5+ on the box, which is probably accurate.  I let my daughter play with it a bit and she happily moved them around on the coffee table in arbitrary pairings.

I hope this comes in handy down the line.  I've been looking up other games by this company, but I can't find anything so far.