Customer Reviews

Math Potatoes: Mind-stretching Brain Food

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The book entitled Math Potatoes contains 16 poems of "mind-stretching brain food." Through cleverly written rhymes, Tang offers kids a way to understand what is being asked and find the answer using problem solving techniques that make arithmetic smarter, easier, and a lot more fun!

Many of the students that I tutor say they don't like math. They resort to counting on their fingers instead of grouping numbers the way Tang suggests in his book. For example, the riddle entitled "Smart Cookies" challenges kids to count each chocolate chip by grouping them into a square and adding the rest. The colorful illustrations and the solutions provided in the back of the book help the students to understand the concepts.

The entire Scholastic math series by Tang is a great educational tool. Highly recommended!

My almost-8 year old daughter has hundreds of books, but which one does she want me to read to her EVERY NIGHT? _Math Potatoes_. I read the little rhyme, then she solves the math problem. I'm going to get some more from this series. She loves it. I love it because it teaches problem solving and math. It's very cool. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

This is a MUST-HAVE book for all elementary classrooms! This book is a superb example of literacy across the curriculum... and it is FUN!

This book is fantastic to get kids to think about numbers in groups. It allows for deep thinking about numbers.

Though I taught middle schoolers for thirty years, I only occasionally intersected with the math world via across the curriculum activities. I bought Math Potatoes because I love all things potato and sometimes teach elementary math at our tutoring center.

The book itself is attractively designed with colorful computer graphics and glorious potatoes on the cover. Alas only the cover and two pages within are potatofied. The author blends verse and math to create riddles and encourage young readers to visualize different ways to group items for addition.

One of the math properties that I understand is the commutative property. Addends can be grouped and added in any order and the sum is the same. It's a simple principle that I think this book belabors. Answers to the riddles with the "correct" grouping strategies are found in the back of the book. Correct means that the suggestions of the riddle were followed. I would like to see other possible groupings mentioned because multiple alternate groupings are possible.

I shared this book with several real math teachers and a few young students. Neither teachers nor students were overly impressed though they do find some value in the book. One teacher suggested adding real life problems and exercises with actual numbers for practice. Seeing the "answer" immediately after each presented puzzle would be convenient though logistically perhaps not practical.

Torn between awarding three or four stars, I've decided to be generous and rate Math Potatoes barely four stars.