Giveaway: G is for Gold Medal: An Olympic Alphabet

Are you counting down to the Olympics?  I know many people are.  Why not add the Olympic excitement with a great book, "G is for Gold Medal:  An Olympic Alphabet" by Brad Herzog and Doug Bowles.  The great people over a Sleeping Bear Press sent me a copy to review and giveaway.

The book is really nice connecting past Olympic history with current history.



As with all of the alphabet books from Sleeping Bear Press, the book features "two stories in one".  If you are reading with younger children, you can just read the rhyming text on the picture portion of the book.  If you are reading with an older child or want more information for yourself, you can read the small text along the edge of the page.



I added the ice skating and gymnastic pages because they are my favorite.

 

I also really liked this page.  Encouraging kids to practice sports.



All in all it's a great book that children are sure to enjoy.

Sleeping Bear Press has some other great books you might want to include in your Olympic reading library including:
B Is for Big Ben: An England Alphabet (Discover the World)
A is for Amazing Moments: A Sports Alphabet (Alphabet Books)

If you would like a chance to win a copy, hit the comment button at the bottom of this post and tell me what your favorite Olympic sport is.

Skip Counting

Skip counting is the basis for children to understand addition and multiplication so it's super important that we take time for kids to learn and understand it.  By no means do I mean memorizing the words ten-twenty-thirty-forty-fifty-sixty-seventy-eighty-ninety-one hundred.  I mean see touch and feel and know how it works...absorbing it, so they truly understand that what we actually mean is 10+10=20+10=30....

The great part is, you can "trick" kids into wanting to learn by telling them you have a faster easier way to count to 100...after all, kids love to be competitive and being fast is a great competitive asset.

Here is what you can do....

I used Dannon Light and Fit Yogurt containers but you can use anything that will stack together nicely.



Take off the labels.  Wrap a paper around the cups.  Have the children put in ten pennies...or ten of any other object.  Have them stack the cups on top of each other.  Then have them practice counting by ten.



Change things up....Have them put 3 in each cup and count by threes....

From there, explain that multiplication is really just a fast way of counting...and learning the multiplication facts will make them super speedy.

To extend learning give them multiplication facts and have them show the problem by using the objects and the cups.  For example have them show 4x2 by taking four cups, putting two objects in each stacking them and counting out the answer.

It's really important that as educators we teach children the in depth understanding.  We need to go beyond route memorization...because we all know that math concepts build on each other and signs of trouble now can easily carry on into future math struggles.