Blog 3

1. I couldn't come up with a children's book that I read in my own childhood that demonstrated mathematical concepts off the top of my head, so I decided to find the book Lemonade For Sale by Stuart J. Murphy. This book is about four young children and their pet parrot. One day, these kids decide that they want to sell lemonade to all of the people in their neighborhood. They want to sell as much lemonade as they can in order to fix their club house! In order to track their progress, they decide that it would be a good idea to use graphs. They create a bar graph with days on the x axis and amount of lemonade on the y axis. For the first three days, their sales increase. On the fourth day, however, their sales plummet due to a street performer stealing their spotlight. On the last day, they decide to have the street performer come to their stand, and make more money than ever! They are able to fix their club house.
e
2. Lemonade For Sale is a children's book that helps children understand the function of graphing in real life. Many children may think that graphing is simply something they learn about in school. This book shows that in reality, it has many uses. Lemonade For Sale demonstrates the use of bar graphs in every day life, and how to use them to track progress as you are working toward a goal. The author shows children how to use bar graphs in everyday life in a creative way. The children track their progress by adding to the bar graph every day. On the first three days, their bars keep growing, but on the fourth day, they sell less, so the bar goes down. On the fifth day, they sell a lot of lemonade, so they have a tall bar on their graph that day. These kids realize how useful bar graphs are for tracking progress, and so will the kids that read the book.

3. I think that literature is an amazing way to teach mathematical concepts to children. When children learn about graphing in class, they may find it boring or think that it doesn't have any use in real life. Books like these teach children that graphing is a useful tool to use in life. When children learn things through literature, they don't necessarily think of it as being taught something. The end result is learning life long lessons through a book!