The M&M's Counting Book By: Barbara Barbieri McGrath

Book Genre: Non-fiction, Counting book

Publishing Info: Charlesbridge Publishing (32 pages)

Awards and honors received: Teachers' Choice Award, 1994

Summary: This book is a simple counting book I would use with beginning kindergarten students. The M&M counting book encourages children to use M&M candy in specific color order to practice counting from one to twelve. Also, it has the children form the various sets of 12. (six groups of two, three groups of four, four sets of three, etc.) The book wraps up by having the chilren make shapes with their M&M’s and then moves on to simple subtraction of their M&M’s. (Which is the fun part for the children!)

Personal rating and reason for rating: ****Great! I really liked this book for the simple fact that it incorporates food (M&M’s) into teaching basic math skills. In my past experience any time you incorporate any type of food (manipulatives) the children get really excited and the majority of time remember that skill. Not only did this book teach about numbers, but it also had the children recognizing color words. For example, add a red M&M or add an orange M&M. The children are required to know what those colors are before they can participate in the activity. In addition, the author also made a connection between the number 9 and the word nine. (9/nine) I would recommend this book to any kindergarten teacher.

Reading level: 1.9 (first grade, 9th month)

Interest level: K-2

Possible uses of the text in integrated units of study:

Reading/Math: I probably would not read this book during my set reading time. I would incorporate this book into my math lesson. I would use this book the first few weeks of school when assessing students to see how well they know their numbers, colors and one-to-one correspondence. I would have crayons of all the different colors laminated on construction paper. As I read the story students will point to the correct crayon color or number. This will help the students who are lacking with these skills. (I would put the crayons and numbers in a blue chart for all students to see during the reading.) After reading the story and reviewing colors and numbers I would show the students bags of M&M’s and have them make a prediction about what they think we are going to do with the M&M’s. (This will get all the students excited and ready to participate.)

Math: I would give each student a yellow math work mat and a bag of M&M’s. I would then read the story again but this time they would complete the directions on each page of the story. I would conduct this lesson my interactice Mimio so I could model for the students. Be sure to monitor to make sure children understand and are kept on track. (Some students won’t know their colors at this time in the year.)

Potential problems or difficulties: There would be a lot of prep time with this lesson because the book tells the students specific colors to put down so each child’s bag would have to have the same colors and amount of M&M’s. You would also need to make sure students aren’t eating the M&M’s throughout the lesson. Set the rules early on in the lesson so that does not happen. With a little time preparation, this will be a fun and exciting math lesson for the students.