Where’s the Math?: Books, Games, and Routines to Spark Children's Thinking

Make math learning both meaningful and fun by building on children’s natural curiosity to help them grow into confident problem solvers and investigators of math concepts. 

Using five math-related questions children wonder about as a framework, this book helps you go deeper into everyday math with children by offering:

• A basic overview of math ideas behind matching and sorting, patterns, number sense, measuring, and spatial relationships
• 20 activities appropriate for children in preschool and kindergarten based on new and classic children’s books, games, and classroom routines
• Suggestions for individualizing activities for diverse learners
• Recommendations for more than 75 children’s books that encourage math-rich thinking and investigation
• Examples of intentional questions, comments, and conversations that stretch and focus children’s understanding of math concepts 

Empower yourself with the guidance and ideas in this practical resource to use play and storytelling to challenge children to think more complexly about the math in everything they see, hear, and do.

Mary Hynes-Berry, PhD, has more than 40 years of experience teaching through oral storytelling while working directly with young children. Her original focus was literacy, but she soon began to find ways to weave in mathematics as she worked with preservice and in-service early childhood professionals. Mary is a faculty member at Erikson Institute in Chicago and a founding member of Erikson Institute’s Early Math Collaborative, which provides professional development and carries out applied research on foundational math in early childhood. She is the author of Don’t Leave the Story in the Book: Using Literature to Guide Inquiry in Early Childhood Classrooms (Teachers College Press, 2012) and a contributing author of Big Ideas of Early Mathematics: What Teachers of Young Children Need to Know (Pearson, 2014) and Growing Mathematical Minds: Conversations Between Developmental Psychologists and Early Childhood Teachers (Routledge, 2019).

Laura Grandau, PhD, has worked in STEM education for 25 years in schools, museums, libraries, and nature centers, emphasizing curiosity and play as central components of learning. She is adjunct faculty at Erikson Institute as well as a teacher educator, researcher, and classroom teacher with expertise in teaching and learning math and science. Formerly, she served as manager of education programs at the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago and senior program developer for Erikson Institute’s Early Math Collaborative. Laura has worked extensively coaching preservice and in-service teachers and supporting curriculum and instructional planning with school leadership teams. She is a contributing author of Growing Mathematical Minds: Conversations Between Developmental Psychologists and Early Childhood Teachers (Routledge, 2019), and her work has also been published in numerous journals, including Teaching Children Mathematics, Cognition and Instruction, and Harvard Educational Review.