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The Best Vacation Ever (MathStart 2) Paperback – Illustrated, February 1, 1997
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“Kids, young and old, fall in love with math when they see how real-life and effortless it becomes thanks to these books.” —Kimberly D. Mueller, Ed.D., First Grade Teacher, Ashbrook School, Lumberton NJ
The Best Vacation Ever is perfect for teaching data collection to first, second, and third graders. The family needs a break. Everybody's always so busy. But where should they go? A very smart and practical little girl asks some key questions and charts the answers. Mom wants to go someplace quiet and cool. Grandma and brother Charlie are looking for fun. And everybody but Dad wants Fluffer the cat to come along. Is there any place that'll make everyone happy?
Kids will love the story and the funny illustrations by Bernard Westcott. Parents and other educators will love how the story and pictures make understanding comparisons a breeze—as well as the concrete examples of how math works! The book contains activities for adults to do with kids to extend math into their own lives!
Math skills are life skills, and the MathStart series supports success!
- This award-winning series by Stuart J. Murphy teaches math through stories and visual models
- 63 books divided into three levels with 21 books in each
- Fun activities kids will love are included to help parents and teachers emphasize the lessons
- Engaging and relatable stories, with each story revolving around practical applications of the math concept presented
- Lively art from top-notch illustrators
- Charts and other visual representations help children understand how the math works and promote deeper comprehension
MathStart's unique combination of stories, illustrations, and visual models helps teachers and parents in the teaching of math and provides all children with the opportunity to succeed.
The math concepts taught in MathStart books conform to state and national standards. Level 1 is Pre-K–Kindergarten; Level 2 is Grades 1–3; Level 3 is Grades 2–4. The series follows math topics across grades so there is a foundational path to learning that runs through the levels.
Help kids with their math skills plus their reading skills with the engaging and fun MathStart series!
- Reading age6 - 10 years
- Print length40 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Grade level1 - 2
- Lexile measure440L
- Dimensions9.81 x 0.09 x 8 inches
- PublisherHarperCollins
- Publication dateFebruary 1, 1997
- ISBN-109780064467063
- ISBN-13978-0064467063
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Editorial Reviews
From School Library Journal
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From the Back Cover
About the Author
Stuart J. Murphy is a visual learning specialist. A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, he has a strong background in design and art direction. He also has extensive experience in the world of educational publishing. Drawing on all these talents, Stuart J. Murphy brings a unique perspective to the MathStart series. In MathStart books, pictures do more than tell stories; they teach math.
Stuart J. Murphy and his wife, Nancy, live in Boston.
Nadine Bernard Westcott has illustrated numerous books for children, including How to Grow a Picket Fence by Mary Louise Cuneo and two popular children's songs: There's a Hole in the Bucket and Over the River and Through the Wood. She has also illustrated another book in the Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science series: I Can Tell by Touching by Carolyn Otto. Ms Westcott lives on Nantucket Island in Massachusetts.
Product details
- ASIN : 0064467066
- Publisher : HarperCollins; Illustrated edition (February 1, 1997)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 40 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9780064467063
- ISBN-13 : 978-0064467063
- Reading age : 6 - 10 years
- Lexile measure : 440L
- Grade level : 1 - 2
- Item Weight : 5 ounces
- Dimensions : 9.81 x 0.09 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #444,067 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #116 in Children's Math Fiction
- #4,415 in Children's Beginner Readers
- #7,103 in Children's Humor
- Customer Reviews:
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About the author
Author of the MathStart series (63 books - see full list at mathstart.net) and I See I Learn series (16 books—see full list at iseeilearn.com)
I was one of those kids who talked all the time in class. I loved telling stories. One day in the 4th Grade, my teacher said, “You tell such good stories, maybe you should try writing some of them down.” “Wow,” I thought. “She thinks my stories are good.” That’s when I started to really enjoy writing.
I was also the class artist. When I wasn’t talking, I was drawing. When I was older, I studied art at the Rhode Island School of Design. That’s where I became interested in visual learning—how we decode and acquire information from graphs, charts, diagrams, models, illustrations and other images.
I became especially interested in educational publishing and have worked on the development of over a dozen major textbook programs, championing visual learning strategies from Pre-K through high school in every major curriculum area.
MATHSTART (mathstart.net)
The inspiration to write math stories for children was sparked by my work on a high school mathematics program. Visual learning strategies helped teens, who had been characterized as “reluctant learners,” understand difficult math concepts. Putting math in the context of stories based on their experiences made them feel more comfortable with abstract concepts. They actually became eager to apply math to real-life problems.
If this approach worked for older students, I began to wonder what might happen if younger children were introduced to math this way!
Even before children can read - or speak many words - they can interpret visual information with ease. The MathStart books (HarperCollins) use simple stories coupled with diagrams, graphs and other visual models to teach everything from probability and pattern recognition to area, capacity and negative numbers.
The Best Bug Parade, (comparing sizes) was my very first published book. It was absolutely thrilling to see my name in print! I never expected that one day there would 63 MathStart books, split over three levels for ages Pre-K to Grade 4.
Each book includes two pages of review and activities designed to help teachers and parents extend learning beyond the story, along with suggestions of related books by other authors. After all, if a child enjoys learning math through stories, then let’s have more stories!
THE MAIN STREET KIDS CLUB: A MATHSTART MUSICAL (MainStreetKidsClub.com)
Now get out your dancing shoes–there is a musical based on six of the MathStart books! The Main Street Kids’ Club, was workshopped at Northwestern University and adapted by Scott Ferguson, who also created the perennially popular production of School House Rock Live!
The songs are terrific. The math is spot on. And the club motto makes my heart sing: “Math Skills are Life Skills!”
I SEE I LEARN (iseeilearn.com)
My latest series of books is focused on young children—Preschool and Kindergarten age.
I See I Learn books (Charlesbridge) teach social, emotional, health and safety, and cognitive skills, such as how to make friends, build confidence, play safely, work together, manage emotions, and make plans. These skills are important for school readiness and for living happy, healthy, productive lives.
The stories “star” a wonderful bunch of friends who live in See-and-Learn City and attend Ready Set Pre-K. The cast includes Freda, Percy, Emma, Ajay, Camille, and Carlos. And, of course, Pickle, the green bull dog—who happens to have a soft-spot for butterflies—and Miss Cathy, their teacher.
I See I Learn stories are modeled on real-life situations and, just as in real-life, often involve more than one skill. For example, Freda Plans a Picnic is about sequencing, a cognitive skill, but the picnic itself is a social event. Percy Plays It Safe focuses on playground safety skills, but playing successfully in a group also requires self-regulation, an emotional skill.
Each book is reviewed by a team of experts, whose backgrounds include early childhood education, cognitive psychology and children’s museums. The stories are also developed to align with and support Core Curriculum State Standards.
Each I See I Learn book includes a special two-page section called A Closer Look, designed to help parents, teachers and caregivers review key points with their children.
WHERE STORIES COME FROM
People always ask me how I come up with my stories. The answer is simple: I talk to a lot of children! I have particularly close relationships with three of the characters in my books: Jack from MathStart's Jack the Builder, Maddie of Mighty Maddie and I See I Learn's Camille, are named after my grandchildren. No matter how big the real Jack, Maddie, and Camille grow to be, I can always pick up a book and see them flying a spaceship, wearing a pretty super-hero cape and building a sand castle at the beach with friends.
Pictures and words. Stories and books. Learning and life!
— Stuart
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The family consists of a girl, her brother, mom and dad, and grandma. The girl is trying to determine where they should go on vacation, and she uses charts to organize data about the family members' destination preferences. There is no discussion beyond that of the actual decision-making process. It is left for you to assume that the vacation was determined by the vote of a simple majority.
Okay, let's examine that. How do you decide in YOUR family about where to take a vacation? I imagine that the first constraint would be either time or money: how much time you can get off work, when the kids have a vacation from school, and what you can afford to do in that period of time. Murphy presents vacations as an entitlement, claiming "...cats need vacations, too." A cat needs a vacation? Get real.
I am bringing this up because by presenting the taking of vacations as "normal," we must ask how children whose families can little afford the rent, let alone a vacation, would interpret this message. If these white peoples' cat deserves a vacation, yet they do not, does that mean that this society values them as being less than an animal? Some more affluent family's pet?
Sounds about right in a nation that spends billions of dollars every year on pet food while children go hungry, in a country where, in most states, child abuse carries a lighter criminal penalty than maligning a dog.
Furthermore, are we to believe that household decisions involving the allocation of resources are put to a simple vote whereby all family members' wishes are given equal weight? If things operated like that in our household, we would have bubble gum and cotton candy for dinner every night. But if you are able to swallow this idea as a "normal" democracy, than you are more likely to buy into the huge lie that every vote is equally counted when it comes to, let's say, the presidential election in Ohio in 2004. Or Florida in 2000. The majority wins, and that's fair. So we have an almost totally white Congress, and almost totally male Senate... you see how this works. It's "democracy." But we know that's not how it really works. Mom and Dad have all the money, therefore Mom and Dad make the decisions. The children obey.