Blog 3

1. For this blog i decided to read Lemonade for Sale by Stuart Murphy and illustrated by Tricia Tusa. The kids in this story, Meg, Matthew, Danny and Sherry (and the pet parrot, Petey) are apart of the Elm Street Kids club. They realize that their club house is pretty run down so in order to get money to rebuild it, they decided to sell lemonade. Danny said that if they were to sell 30 or 40 cups a day, they would be able to get enough money. On Monday they set up their stand and had the parrot get people’s attention by screaming “lemonade for sale!”. The first day they were able to sell 30 cups and as the days went on their sales began to increase. On Thursday however, their sales dropped because a Juggler down the street was stealing all of their customers. In order to fix this problem, Sherry came up with the idea to have the juggler, do his juggling next to their lemonade stand that way they wouldn’t lose any more customers. This plan worked and they were able to earn enough money by Friday to rebuild their clubhouse.

2. The mathematical concept that is shown in this book is graphing. Once Danny suggests they should sell lemonade, Sherry exclaims that she would volunteer to keep track of how many cups they sold each day. She says she will list the number of cups along the side of the graph (Y-axis) and the days of the week along the bottom of the graph (X-axis). As the days go on and their sales increase, Sherry fills in the bar graph to show the other members of the club how well they are doing. When sales drop on Thursday, the kids were able to physically see something was wrong, which led them to investigate and find out about the juggler down the street. The graphing was also helpful because on Friday it showed that their sales were over the top, which meant they had earned enough money to fix their clubhouse. This story does a great job of explaining how to set up a graph by discussing the x and y axis and also it also shows how helpful graphs can be when tracking items or events.

3. I think literature is effective in teaching mathematical concepts because it is different. When writing notes on a board or verbally explaining a concept can get boring and kids, especially younger kids, tend to lose focus. By putting it in a story it grabs the attention of the kids and it helps them understand the concept and how it works in a different way.