Books We Love

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.

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.