Over the past few weeks, we have been using Halloween storybooks to introduce and reinforce several math and language concepts. The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything is about an old woman who walks in the woods one autumn night. Along the way, she is followed by several articles of clothing that attempt to frighten her. After they are unsuccessful at startling her, the old lady suggests that the items come together to form a scarecrow to scare away the birds.
The Big Pumpkin is the story of a witch who plants a pumpkin seed with a plan to make a Halloween pie. When the pumpkin grows too huge to harvest from the vine, la sorcière verte accepts help from un fantôme blanc, un vampire rouge, et une chauve-souris noir who eventually work together to pull the pumpkin off the vine and share the pumpkin pie.
There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bat is a Halloween twist on the familiar story, There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly. The children easily anticipated the pattern the book would follow and quickly identified rhyming words in the text.
Using these three books, we reviewed articles of clothing, colours, and Halloween vocabulary in French. The children enjoyed the tactile experience of manipulating and placing the magnetic pieces in the correct order while our group retold the stories. All three books are also very useful for practicing ordinal numbers i.e. “Who did the old lady meet in the forest first, second, third ...? (premier, deuxième, troisième ...?).” “Who pulled on the pumpkin first, second, third ...?” “What did the old lady swallow first, second, third ...?”
Storybooks are excellent tools for fostering a link between literature and mathematical ideas.