This week, the Preps were introduced to another story book that involves counting.
‘If one is a snail and two is a person, we must be counting by feet! Just follow the sign to the beach, where a bunch of fun-loving crabs, lounging dogs, gleeful insects, and bewildered-looking snails obligingly offer their feet for counting in a number of silly, surprising combinations – from one to one hundred!’
We listed all of the different creatures in the book and counted how many feet they have.
1 – Snail (the bottom of the snail is known as a foot!)
2 – A person
4 – A dog
6 – An insect
8 – A spider
10 – A crab
The Preps then completed a task where they had to draw the appropriate creature (or creatures) into a numbered box.
Some discovered that the odd numbers can be trickier, you have to make the number using more than one creatures (unless it is made with just snails!)
5 can be made lots of different ways when counting how many legs:
- one snail and two people
- five snails
- three snails and one person
- one dog and one snail
This text is a fabulous way for children to build their conceptual understanding of numbers being made up of parts! (part/part/whole)