1001 Things in Math

It is so important to link concrete material to more abstract numeric representations, and to have children “play” with their mathematical thinking, especially in the early years. I also love to find books to bring into math class that aren’t normally thought of as “math books.” 

1001 Things to Spot in the Sea shows thirteen scenes with animals and water activities from around the world. It is a very colorful and engaging I-spy sort of book that immediate draws children in, due to its very content and nature. However, I’ve found it a wonderful resource in creating context for helping students use place value ideas to add with regrouping. Quick lessons over the next 10 days or so will focus on strategies for combining and regrouping numbers.

Here’s how we started:

The first page or scene was labeled, “Open Sea.” I held the book so all could study and after a few moments I asked, “How many things to spot do you think there are in this scene?” Volunteers shared their estimates and explained how they came to their “best guess.”

I then took one interlocking cube and told the students that this would represent to one humpback whale in the picture. I put it on the chalk try in front of the room. Then we took turns with the cubes to represent all of the creatures in the scene and lined them up in a sort of train.

I wrote all of the corresponding numbers above each stack of cubes, and asked for ideas on how to quickly count the line of numbers. It was decided that the “make 10” strategy would be best. That was pretty easily done – there were two 10s, a 7/3 combo, and a 9/1 combo. That made 40. Then we had 8 plus 3 and 8 plus 4, which was 11 and 12 (or 10 plus 1 and 10 plus 2). We came up with the grand total of 63.

Tomorrow morning we will check our work another way, by physically making stacks of 10. Then we will go on to the second page of the book, this time using our good friends, the base 10 blocks. In a couple weeks, we will have spotted 1001 things in the sea by using lots of different strategies and materials.