Books We Love

While reading this book, students have an opportunity to see how the ordinal numbers 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and so on to 10th are related to the cardinal numbers 1 to 10. The illustrations and the language make the book fun for students. The mathematical focus is on the fact that each ordinal number is related to a particular cardinal number.

The circled numbers at the bottom of each page help students see the link between the ordinal and cardinal number. Although the ordinal numbers are spelled out in words, you might choose to show students that some people write these ordinal numbers in numeric form, such as 3rd, 9th, and so on.

Begin by reading 10 Little Squirrels all the way through to allow students to enjoy the story.

Reread the story. After each page, ask questions such as these:

What do you notice about the numbers on the squirrels’ shirts?

Are the numbers getting bigger or smaller as we read through the story?

How are the squirrels arranged on the branch?

What do you notice about the numbers that are circled at the bottom of the page?

If students have not already mentioned the ordinal numbers, you could go back through the story again and read the ordinal number word on each page. Ask the following question:

How is the word that is dark (sixth, fourth, etc.) like the number on the squirrel’s shirt?

To consolidate the learning, provide students with five different-coloured counters. Ask them to arrange the counters so that the first one is red and the third one is green.

Ask students questions about the ordinal numbers for the other colours, too, such as these:

Which word would you say for blue?

Which word would you say for yellow?

Follow-up activities can extend the learning from the book. For example, students may be asked to draw a picture showing 5 or 6 objects or animals arranged in a line (e.g., stars, crayons, fish, cars). One of the items can be different from the others (e.g., a different colour, bigger, smaller, higher). Students can share their pictures and use an ordinal number to say how the one item is different. For example, the 4th one is a different colour.

Children all seem to love dinosaurs! As this story progresses, students meet more and more dinosaurs, each a different colour and appearing one by one on the page. The numbers increase from 1 to 10.

There are many ways to help students consider counting principles in this book.

Notice that colour is used to help distinguish dinosaurs so that students can keep track of the fact that each preceding number is embedded in subsequent numbers (e.g., dinosaur 1 is part of the set of 2, 3, 4, 5).

Notice, too, that the numbers in circles at the bottom of each spread provide an alternative representation for the numbers from 1 to 10, reminding students of the sequence of counting numbers. Each colour of number matches the colour of the dinosaur to further reinforce the concept.

As a beginning, read 10 Sleepy Dinosaurs through with students in its entirety so that students can enjoy the language and rhyme.

Then reread the book, having students confirm the number of full dinosaurs on each page. For example, if a page mentions three dinosaurs, ask students the following questions:

How many dinosaurs are shown?

Does the number of dinosaurs match the number we said?

Have students find that number on a number path and talk about whether that number is early in the path or later in the path; discuss why that makes sense.

Have students consider the sizes of the dinosaurs, and ask if the size of a dinosaur makes any difference in how the dinosaur was counted. This task helps confirm what is called the counting principle of abstraction.

As you read pages further along in the book, ask students to count the dinosaurs in any order to see if the number of dinosaurs changes. For example, students could count the dinosaurs starting with the green dinosaur on page 17. Then students could count those dinosaurs again starting with the red dinosaur. This task helps confirm what is called the counting principle of order irrelevance.

To consolidate the learning, choose a random spread (e.g., pages 12 and 13), and ask the following questions:

How could looking at the number path at the bottom of the page help you predict how many dinosaurs you’ll see next?

Did you need the number path to know?

As a follow-up activity, teachers might consider asking students to think about how this book is like other counting books they know and how it is different.