September 25 – Math Storytelling Day

Happy Math Storytelling Day!

Do you like math word problems? Sometimes they can be confusing. Sometimes they can be fun… like the ones here!

The Great Math Tattle Battle written by Anne Bowen and illustrated by Jaime Zollars (2006)

Harley Harrison was not only the best math student in second grade, he was also the biggest tattletale. He can’t seem to mind his own business. Then Emma Jean Smith joined their class. Emma Jean was even better at math than Harley, and she was just as big a tattletale! Tattletale notes were written and delivered all day long. Then one day, their teacher gave them an assignment to work on together for extra recess time. They had to work as a team to earn the extra recess and stop trying to out-do each other.

Math Curse written and illustrated by Jon Scieska and Lane Smith (1995)

After his teacher tells him that almost everything you can think of can be a math problem, the boy is cursed. He can only think of math problems from morning to night. Everything from how much time he has to get ready before the bus comes, to how much milk is left in the gallon carton he just used on his breakfast cereal. As the day goes on, the problem get more elaborate. Lunch becomes a fractions problem, Social Studies becomes a problem in length, even Art class become a problem in geometry. By the time he leaves school, he’s become a math zombie, a raving math lunatic! He’s not even free from math problems at home. He has to solve money problems, multiplication, and division. Finally he fills a chalkboard with numbers and symbols, breaks the chalk in half, put the two halves together to make a whole, and jumps out of the hole just in time to wake up!

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If today, just leaves you craving more math problems, check out this book!

Eat Your Math Homework: Recipes for Hungry Minds written by Ann McCallum and illustrated by Leeza Hernandez (2011)

This easy-to-follow recipe book gives kids some great math activities while cooking up delicious snacks for themselves and their families. Try a few today!