Monster Math

 Miranda, A. (1999). Monster Math. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company. Grades K-2.
Written by: Anne Miranda
Subject Area: Math
Genre: Fiction
Theme: Counting, adding, subtracting, group counting

 Summary: Little Monster is having a party. The party quickly escalates and one monster turns into 40 monsters! Mother Monster gets very overwhelmed and asks some to leave. This is a fantastic story that uses many types of math such as addition, counting by multiples, and subtraction.

Initiating questions/activity:
Questions:

1. How many monsters are on the cover?
2. What kind of math do you think we will do with these monsters?
3. Have you ever seen a monster?
4. Are monster real?

Activity:
Have the students sit in a circle. Then have them count off by how many people are in the class. Take the number and write it on the board. Then add it to the number of monsters on the cover. Then subtract the amount of monsters from students in the class. Then take other things in the room and do the same thing (such as number of days in the month, so take September 29th. Add 29 (number of days we have had so far this month) and 10 (number of monsters on cover) and then subtract the number of monsters by the days of the month.

Extending Activity and Question:
Questions:

1. Why did monsters show up at the other monsters house?
2. Why did monster leave the monster's house?
3. What was the largest number of monsters at the house?
4. What was the smallest number of monsters at the house?

Activity:
Act out the story. Start with one monster, and continuously add the monsters and you re-read the story. This will help children actually see what you're doing with the monster throughout the book. So start with adding as it does in the book and then subtract the monsters when the book tells you to subtract them.This visual will really help the children understand the math in the book. While you're subtracting and adding students have a scribe (or the teacher) write the math problem on the board that is being done. This will give students two visuals.