![[50 Word Friday] Say Hi to The Math Shack!](http://mathfour.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/image-17.png)
There was a math mom who wanted to help other moms be more math-y. She went into the garage to put together a website. Eight months later her husband was sick of her taking up garage space.
Introducing The Math Shack – safe haven for all things mom and math!
This post originally appeared on The HSBA Post on October 20, 2011.
The Pumpkin Runner by Marsha Diane Arnold (illustrated by Brad Sneed) is a sweet story about a man and his dog on a 900 km race across Australia. What’s nifty is that you can use this story in your math lessons! Below is a list of some questions to try.
Filter all these questions before asking them of your children. Some children might find them more advanced and need some help and discussion. Others may dig right in.
Use this downloadable list of math stimulators, if you want to give them to your kids without the tips.
And keep in mind, math is a discovery process; you can get to the right answer in many ways.
You can point out that he’d been running for 50 years and he started when he was 10 years old.
When 10-year-old Joshua ran for the first time, he ran with an ancestor of Yellow Dog. The book says he started running with the “great-great-great-grandfather of Yellow Dog.”
How old did each dog get? Is it possible that Joshua ever ran with more than one dog at the same time?
Children might think about it this way: If one pumpkin gave Joshua enough energy to run 40 km (his very first run) how many pumpkins might he need to run 900 km in the race?
Children can also count the number of pumpkins loaded in the Jeep. Allow your child to ponder, guess, speculate, or calculate the answer.
He trained for the race for three months.
Joshua got to the finish line two days earlier than any previous winner. How many days do you think it took him? Why was he faster than everyone else?
When Joshua split the winnings, how much did each person get? If he only kept enough for new overalls and gum boots, how much do you think he might have given to Aunt Millie and Rancher Waudley?
You can use the book The Pumpkin Runner and the math stimulators in your Five in a Row math day or integrate it into any other math curriculum. Also try using the same line of questioning with other picture books you have.
Oh – and don’t forget to share how it went in the comments!
Thanks to Will Summer who inspired this post with a retweet to me.
Seems researchers have previously studied the differences in math skills among children vs. adolescents and grownups. Dr. Vinod Menon with has done new research on early math training that focused on kiddos who where merely one year apart.
Turns out that in one year of math, the brain changes quite significantly!
Daughter is heavy into Brown Bear, Brown Bear by Bill Martin, Jr. and Eric Carle. This is not a math book. Nor does it pretend to be. But I’ve found a way to use it to develop math skills.
When we arrive at the page with the children, we practice counting the kids. First in one direction, then in the other – as direction matters to kids. It isn’t inherent that if you count one way you’ll get the same number as if you count the other way.
Sometimes we’ll count the top row of children and add it to the number of the bottom row. We can practice the commutative property by adding 5 + 4 = 9 and the adding 4 + 5 = 9.
As an alternative twist, we’ll count and add the kids on the left page to the kids on the right page. This one gets fun, because that little blond girl is half and half!
So we can now add fractions and practice the commutative property at the same time!
With Dr. Menon’s research, we now know how important it is to get started early with math learning. What other things can you do to start teaching math skills early?
