Math Monday! I See A Pattern Here by Bruce Goldstone

It's MATH MONDAY! Join Mandy at Enjoy and Embrace Learning for the Math Monday Link Up!

I am a huge Bruce Goldstone fan and was thrilled to see his new book I SEE A PATTERN at Cover to Cover last week. I bought it, figuring it might be a bit primary for my kids but that we definitely needed to add it to our Bruce Goldstone collection.  If you are not familiar with this author/photographer, we've reviewed several of his books on the blog!

WOW! Was I surprised. I should have know that Goldstone would teach us more about patterns than I expected. I should have realized that he would take the book in directions I hadn't considered.  The one thing I love about his books is that there are so many places for readers to enter and engage.

As always the photos in this book are fabulous. The size and color draw you in immediately. For young students the visuals will be plenty to learn from and talk about.  For older readers, Goldstone includes options.

He begins the book talking about pattern, what makes a pattern, where we find patterns.  In the bottom corner of the first spread, there is a bright box with the heading "MathSpeak". In it he says, "Mathematicians use special words to describe patterns. Check out these speech balloons if you want to talk MathSpeak, too. Then on pages throughout the book, Goldstone introduces math words that go along with what he is sharing on the page.

Goldstone starts with simple patterns with beads and explains how they are made using slides. He continues on with ideas around rotation and symmetry, scale and tessellations.  There are some activities for kids at try at the end of the book.

This book, as with all of Goldstone's, is one that I am excited to bring to the classroom. Lots of ideas about patterns for kids to explore over time!

THAT'S A POSSIBILITY by BRUCE GOLDSTONE

Bruce Goldstone is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors.  I was thrilled during a recent visit to Cover to Cover when Beth shared his most recent book with me, That's a Possibility!: A Book About What Might Happen.   I love books that support concept development and understanding of difficult vocabulary. This book is a great picture book that does both things well!

Bruce Goldstone takes the idea of probability and explains it over and over in ways that kids can understand-flipping a coin, rolling dice, getting a certain prize out of a gumball machine. Using white background and amazing photographs, each page is an engaging visual with so much to think about.  And he embeds the confusing words that go along with probability and possibility throughout the book: possibility, probability, certain, impossible, possible, likely, odds, etc.

I'm thinking about using this somehow at the beginning of the year as part of some kind of interactive all display but I'm not sure--it certainly invites conversation and thinking.  I am sure this book will be read again and again by my students this year.

AWESOME AUTUMN by Bruce Goldstone

When Beth (at Cover to Cover) walked over to hand me a new book about autumn, my first thought was that I was not interested. But I should know by now that Beth only hands me great books!  The book she handed me was Awesome Autumn by Bruce Goldstone. The Subtitle of this book is "All Kinds of Fall Facts and Fun".   I opened it up and knew I had to buy it.  Immediately.  Bruce Goldstone is the author of Great Estimations,  Greater Estimations and 100 Ways to Celebrate 100 Days. I love every one of his books and I love this new one too!

Each page in this book is pretty much a stand alone. Each page looks at some different aspect of fall-How Does Autumn Feel? In Autumn, Some Birds Leave Town, What Do People Do In Autumn? etc. The photos on each page make you want to spend a lot of time there.  Although some pages are mostly photos and labels, other pages have a great deal of text. Just the perfect amount of text for kids to dig in and read.

This is a gorgeous book that is packed with information.  It can be used as a read aloud and it will tie nicely into science units around seasons or weather.  I can see younger readers spending lots of time with the book and I can see my upper elementary students reading it from cover to cover. It is filled with so much to look at and to learn.

New Math Literature

2 years ago, I purchased the book GREAT ESTIMATIONS and LOVED IT! The kids in my 3rd/4th grade class LOVED it! It had the feel of an "I Spy" Book but had so much to teach us about math. I know that books often help kids make sense of math concepts and this is one that can help all of us think differently about estimating. So, yesterday, I was thrilled when Beth at Cover to Cover showed me GREATER ESTIMATIONS-- a second book about estimating!

Bruce Goldstone (who I was happy to learn grew up in Ohio!) is quite the genius. You don't realize it at first, but these books are teaching books. Goldstone takes us through the process of learning to make good estimates. But you are so busy having such fun looking at the amazing photos and trying to make a good estimate, that it almost takes many reads to pick up all of the great things that you can do to make better estimates.

Bruce Goldstone chooses some pretty cool things to photograph and for us to estimate. He chooses a variety because he teaches us the different ways to estimate--clump counting, estimating length, etc. Readers spend time looking at rubber ducks, honeybees, skydivers, dominoes, hairs on a cat, and blades of grass.

Lots of interesting facts as well as humorous talking bubbles fill the pages. The author also includes a note at the end of the book. He talks about the fun of estimating, but also about how helpful it is in everyday life. He shares times when estimation is critical that I hadn't really thought about.

I had just assumed that Goldstone used computers to create these images but, from his author blurb in the back of the books that Beth pointed out to me, it seems that he spends hours and hours setting real things up for photographing! Very cool.

Goldstone has a fun website that includes info about him, his books and more. It also includes a fun game called "Estimatron" that allows you to practice those estimation skills!  If you like the ducks in the book, you'll be happy to see them again (and again) on the site!

Great New Nonfiction Picture Books

I just found 2 great, brand-new, nonfiction picture books! The first one is a great one about estimation. It is called GREAT ESTIMATIONS (get it?) and it is by Bruce Goldstone. It has great, colorful photographs and invites kids to estimate something on each page. I like a lot of things about this book. First of all, the cover is inviting. Who wouldn't want to pick it up? Secondly, it really teaches kids how to estimate well. It teaches readers the difference between a random guess and a good estimate. It shows them a strategy and then gives them a photo to practice on. It also includes hints to help you out if you still need help. The photos are very fun. The reader gets to estimate lots of things (macaroni, Cheerios, doll shoes, rabbits). It feels a bit like the "I Spy" books because it is so eye-catching and interactive. You can spend lots of time on each of the pages. Love this one! GREAT ESTIMATIONS 

The other book is called EXTREME ANIMALS: THE TOUGHEST CREATURES ON EARTH by Nicola Davies. This book is a fun book about animals that have adapted to extreme conditions. The book is a great size (small) and the illustrations are fun and comical. Lots of great information for readers about animals and their environments. The book is organized in stand-alone pages so kids can read about one animal at a time if they don't want to read it from cover to cover. I think this is a great nonfiction book for middle and upper elementary kids. It is packed with pretty cool info! (If you get this one, make sure to take off the cover and look at the illustrations underneath. The endpages are pretty fun too!)