Ten Sly Piranhas Math Pack
Ten Sly Piranhas by
William
Wise
Written by Kathy Ives, Earl Buxton
School, 1996
OBJECTIVES:
Review counting
backwards
Introduce
subtracting ( -1)
MATERIALS:
10 fish
crackers
Book, Ten
Sly Piranhas (R)
Math Journal
(R)
10 Take Away
cards (R)
A.
Read the book
and discuss some of the following questions:
What
is a piranha (discuss some of the facts located on the inside of the back
cover relating to piranhas.)
What does it mean to be “sly”?
B.
Using the goldfish crackers, practice
counting from one to ten.
Lay 10 goldfish out in a row.
Count them starting at 1.
Now, start at the other end and count backwards from 10.
Reread
the story with your child and his crackers.
Let him pretend he is a hungry piranha eating one goldfish “with
a gulp and a gurgle” along with the story.
Have him predict and verbalize the new number each time.
Optional:
Use
the take away cards to demonstrate how we write the action of take away.
(“10 – 1” is telling you to start with a group of 10 and
remove one.) Now, choose
another card. What does it
tell us to do?)
C.
Continue counting higher than 10.
Using your
child’s fingers and your fingers, count up to 11.
Now count backwards from 11, having one finger disappear each time.
Can he/she go higher? Try
12, 13, 14, 15 and then backwards each time.
D. Have your child practice writing the numbers from 0-10 in his/her Math Journal (0, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10)
Then write them in the reverse order from 10 – 0.
Try to encourage proper spacing between each number.
E.
Drawing and labeling sets.
Draw a set of 10 things (fish, perhaps) and label it 10.
Draw a set of nine things and label it 9.
Continue in this manner with each set becoming one less, until you
reach zero. (Try to use a
maximum of one double page in the Math Journal for this drawing activity.)
