Six Sleepy Sheep by Jeffie Ross Gordon; John O'BrienReview by: David J. WhitinThe Arithmetic Teacher, Vol. 40, No. 9 (MAY 1993), p. 531Published by: National Council of Teachers of MathematicsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41195856 .

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Six Sleepy Sheep, Jeffie Ross Gordon, illus. by John O'Brien. 1991, 21 pp., $12.95 cloth. ISBN 1-878093-06-1. Caroline House, Boyds Mills Press, 910 Church St., Honesdale, PA 18431.

In Six Sleepy Sheep these animals try various tricks to help themselves fall asleep. They skip in circles and one falls asleep; they slurp celery soup and another falls asleep; they tell spooky stories, sing silly songs, sip simmered milk, and count to 776, and eventually they all fall asleep. However, the snoring of one wakes up the whole group, and the story ends as the story began ! The pen-and-ink illustrations are lively and amusing and nicely convey the mathematical pattern as the story progresses. On the left-hand side of each page the set of six sheep begins to decrease one by one; by focusing on this page alone and flipping the pages forward and backward, read- ers can note the inverse relationship between addition and subtraction. On the right-hand side of the page the set of six sheep is represented as two sets: those who have fallen asleep and those who are still awake. In this way the readers see the concept of equivalence represented as the sheep show different names for 6: 5 + 1, 4 + 2, 3 + 3, and so on. The book is a good predictable story for young readers because of the repetition of language and story events. - David J. Whitin.

We Keep α Store, Anne Shelby, paintings by John Ward. 1990, 27pp., $14.95 cloth. ISBN 0-531-05856-5. OrchardBoob, 387 Park Ave., S., New York, NY 10016.

Here is a beautiful story of a family who works together to run a country store. We learn about keeping a store from the young girl's perspec- tive as she describes the many facets of running such a business: we see mother weighing a bag of candy on the big white scale and figuring out what to order from the big grocery company; we see father opening boxes of goods and see his young daughter stacking cans on shelves as well as counting on her fingers to help mother figure the change for a customer.

A lot of mathematical activities are thus rep- resented in the story. However, the mathematics is just a part of the larger story of a family that grows together in love as they work and support each other. Many of the illustrations show this family of three tied together with their hands in interesting ways; as they balance the scale, use the cash register, or wave good-bye to custom- ers, they always have a hand free to pat each other's back or hold onto father's pocket. The store is also a place for storytelling and whittling cedar sticks; readers come to appreciate the central role that such stores played in building a close-knit community. A strength of the illustra- tions is that they are not Stereotypie but rather portray a variety of people and personalities.

In many schools older students run a school store that sells the important supplies of paper, pencils, erasers, notebooks, and so on. They might enjoy comparing this story with their own experiences. - David J. Whitin.

REVIEWING AND VIEWING

Etcetera

Every Day Counts, Level 1, Level 3, and Level 5. 1992. Each kit contains teacher' s guide, calendar and calendar pieces, month strips, teaching resources, clock, depositor boxes, vinyl pockets, coins, 1-100 board, and markers. Yesterday, Today and Tomor- row, gr. K-2 only. $105. D.C. Heath & Co., 125 Spring St., Lexington, MA 02173.

Every Day Counts is a daily ten-to-fifteen- minute supplementary mathematics instruction for grades K-5. It builds and reviews concepts day by day using an interactive display of calen- dar activities for each grade level.

Patterns, geometry, fact families, measure- ment, money, place value, mental mathematics, problem solving, and graphing are developed at every level, along with a 100-day celebration. In addition, grade 1 integrates birthdays and time (1 minute a day for 59 days!), grade 3 includes multiples, and grade 5 deals with decimals (0.01 each day for 99 days!). The teacher's guide accurately describes this well-planned and clever program saying, "a little time = a lot of math."

The teacher's guide is organized by months and makes easy-to-follow suggestions for class discussions, along with instructions for daily calendar updates. The program is flexible. A teacher can choose to use some or all the activi- ties with either a purchased kit of materials or those created with the copy masters and sugges- tions contained in the teacher' s edition. It can be used in one block of time or in several short time frames.

Students will benefit from the visual, cumula- tive growth of concepts over time - bit by bit. The simple bulletin-board displays will stimu- late thinking, prediction, and discussions in the classroom. The impact of this program becomes evident as students begin to anticipate the next pattern on the calendar, the next number on the counting line, or the next amount in the daily depositor. - Alon Stevens, Pinecrest Elemen- tary School, Lithia, FL 33547, and Inez Davis, Ruskin Elementary School, Ruskin, FL 33570.

Edited by Janet Bauman-Boatman Hillsborough County Public Schools Tampa, FL 33601-3408 Gillian R. Clouthier University of British Columbia Vancouver, ВС V6T 1Z5

Math in the Supermarket: Consumer Math, Larry Par sky. 1992, 111 pp., paper + 8-pp. teacher's guide, $6.95. ISBN 0-87694- 407-7. Educational Design, 554 Mitchell St., Orange, NJ 07050.

According to the author, Math in the Supermar- ket helps students relate basic consumer and mathematics skills to concrete shopping appli- cations. Parsky suggests that this resource can be used in classes for secondary school and adult students in remedial reading and math- ematics, special education, homemaking, and bilingual and ESL classes, as well as for parenting, dropout prevention, and Adult Basic Education programs. This book is meant to be a workbook for students. It includes a separate eight-page teacher' s guide and answer-key book- let. Here the author explains the content and purpose of each unit and offers ideas for ex- tended practice and supplementary projects and activities.

The book is composed of thirteen units and two appendixes. At the beginning of most units the key terms are listed and defined. The first unit contains a questionnaire designed to deter- mine students' prior experiences dealing with supermarket shopping. The second unit reviews the four basic operations using money. Units 3-12 include activities for developing such con- sumer skills as making a shopping list, interpret- ing cash-register receipts, making up recipes, and comparing prices taking into account quan- tity, size, and price. The last unit consists of simple word problems about money in a super- market setting. The appendixes contain infor- mation to keep in mind when making up a shopping list, along with a list of professional health and trade organizations ih the United States.

The book presents a comprehensive and thor- ough look at consumer shopping. It uses real- life prices, product names, and coupons to illus- trate examples and exercises, making math- ematics more real and relevant to students but also limiting its use to a setting in the United States. For example, all coupons, recipes, and prices are based on American products, and all the products used in the examples and exercises use the Imperial system with little attention to conversion to the metric system. Even within the United States, the change of price in the market and differences in prices and products throughout the states might present some diffi- culties when using this book. In those situations, as suggested in the book, current supermarket advertisements and coupons could be used in- stead. Plenty of interesting ideas for projects are found in this book, such as asking students to adapt recipes for doubling or halving, to write commercials to advertise a product, to make a survey to find the most popular products, and so on. These suggestions could be adapted to any mathematics classroom.

MAY 1993 531

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