Sizing Up Winter (Math in Nature Series #3)

by Lizann Flatt, Ashley Barron (Illustrator)

Overview

As young readers journey into the natural world, they will discover that numbers, patterns, shapes — and much more! — can be found in everyday plants and animals.

What if animals and plants knew math, just like us? Would snowflakes all fall from the same height in the sky? Would otters spread themselves evenly across lakes? Would groundhogs be aware of the date? In Sizing Up Winter, the third title in the Math in Nature series, nature comes to life to help children grasp concepts of time and measurement.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781771473392
Publisher:	Owlkids Books
Publication date:	08/15/2018
Series:	Math in Nature Series , #3
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	8.30(w) x 10.30(h) x 0.20(d)
Age Range:	5 - 7 Years

About the Author

LIZANN FLATT has written many information books for children, including The Nature Treasury and Let’s Go! A former editor of chickaDEE Magazine, her children’s writing has won many honors, including a Distinguished Achievement Award from The Association of Educational Publishers. She lives in Muskoka, ON.

ASHLEY BARRON studied illustration at the Ontario College of Art & Design. She has since illustrated a number of books with Owlkids and Kids Can Press. Ashley shares a studio with her partner and three cats in Toronto, Ontario.

Editorial Reviews

"This terrific series provides cross-curricular activities for K-2 classrooms and non-formal learning environments."

Green Teacher Magazine

Barron's stunning cut-paper collages are the highlight of the book, while backmatter provides a paragraph of information about each of the featured creatures. When read with a caring adult, this may challenge readers to look at measurement in a different way.

Kirkus Reviews

"This interesting book uses the winter season to demonstrate different ways of measuring... A great introduction of math concepts to very young children."

Youth Services Book Review

"Sizing Up Winter expands upon the number sense and numeration skills learned in the previous "Math in Nature" titles and invites readers to reflect on patterns and shapes in nature through interactive measurement problems."

CM Magazine - Natalie Schembri

"Ashley Barron's cheery cut-paper collage illustrations make this book inviting to young eyes, and the author's appended "Nature Notes" offer tantalizing thumbnail descriptions of some of the more northerly animals"

Books For Kids Blog

Children who peruse the illustrations carefully and welcome the challenge of problem solving will enjoy this book.

School Library Journal - Sara-Jo Lupo

"Third in the "Math in Nature" series, Sizing Up Winter exhibits elegant, lacy collage art illustrations in tandem with poetic prose propositions that imagine the presence of math and number concepts in nature."

Children's Bookwatch

Praise for Counting on Fall:
"Barron's cut-paper collages have the crispness of an autumn afternoon, and Flatt smoothly touches on estimation, counting by fives and tens, counting backwards, and other mathematical concepts while maintaining a gentle, whimsical tone."
— Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

2013-08-15
Flatt's latest, the third in the Math in Nature series, encourages children to use math to measure. Measuring with nonstandard units found in nature--footprints in the snow, otters in lakes, piles of porcupine leftovers--Flatt and Barron encourage children to look at the world in new ways. But this way of measuring may also confuse very young readers, for whom the book is best suited: "How far do flakes fall? / Is it one length for all? / The distance depends / on the start and the end." One question on this spread asks readers to count "[h]ow many snowflakes deep is the snow?" The grid of blue, gray and purple flakes provides the answer--eight--but it doesn't have any basis in reality. Other pages are more successful, encouraging readers to measure using the birds at two birdfeeders, bringing up the issue of the size of the measuring units--each is four birds long, but chickadees and cardinals are different sizes, as are their feeders. Distance, area, capacity, mass, time and comparisons round out the volume, which asks good questions, but children already need to have a good grasp of those concepts in order to answer them. Barron's stunning cut-paper collages are the highlight of the book, while backmatter provides a paragraph of information about each of the featured creatures. When read with a caring adult, this may challenge readers to look at measurement in a different way. (Math picture book. 4-7)

Kirkus Reviews