Monday, October 10, 2016

Terrific math concept book

I’m loving How Much Does a Ladybug Weigh?by Alison Limentani.

This is a picture book for the primary grades best used in math lessons about measurement, size, counting and even patterns, to some extent.

Based on the weight of an average healthy animal, each set of pages leads us from a small animal to a slightly larger one, comparing how many of the smaller animals it takes to weigh the same as the larger animal.  For example 10 ants weigh the same as 1 ladybug. Nine ladybugs weigh the same as 1 grasshopper. Eight grasshoppers weigh the same as 1 stickleback fish. And so on until the author circles back to comparing the weight of 1 swan to 362,880 ladybugs.

The countdown has been cleverly executed and I imagine it took some research to find the animals to fit within this pattern. The end pages tell us the weights of each creature so that we too can do our own calculations. The one down side is the weights are only in imperial units and not metric.

The illustrations are attractive with bold colours and lino cut prints.

I recommend checking it out.


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