Blog 3

Mathematics in a story

Lemonade for Sale by Stuart Murphy
1. This children's book is about children from the Elm Street Kid's Club deciding to try to make money by selling lemonade at a lemonade stand in order to fix their falling-apart clubhouse. The kids,  Sheri, Matthew, Meg, and Danny all work together.  They set up a lemonade stand and had Meg's parrot, Petey, yell "Lemonade for sale!" as people walked by.  Matthew squeezed the lemons, Meg mixed in the sugar, Danny shook it up with ice.  After each day of selling lemonade, Sheri would keep track of the number of of cups of lemonade they sold each day on a bar graph.  For example, they sold 30 cups in the first day.  They were doing well selling lemonade until a juggler, Jed, stole the attention they had been getting at the lemonade stand.  In order to fix this problem, Sheri talked to the juggler and they agreed that the kids would set up the lemonade stand right next to Jed juggling in order to increase sales.  The plan worked wonderfully and the kids were able to make enough money to rebuild their clubhouse by the end of the week!

2.  This book introduced the mathematical concept of bar graphs. The kids calculated that they could sell about 30 or 40 cups of lemonade a day for a week in order to make enough money to fix the clubhouse.  Sheri, decided to make a bar graph with the number of cups on the y axis and the days of the week on the x axis. Every day Sheri kept track of how many cups they sold.  The first day they sold 30 cups then the second day they sold 40 cups. Each day Sheri filled in the bar graph keeping track of the number of lemonade cups they sold.  The third day they sold 50 cups.  The forth day however, their sales started to decrease and they only sold 24 cups that day and filled in the graph with corresponding numbers. By looking at the graph and noticing the decrease in numbers they realized that they had to do something in order to keep up the original rate of lemonade sales.  Once Sheri talked to the juggler, Jed, and the kids set up the lemonade stand right next to Jed, they sold the most lemonade that day then they had any other day.  Their sales were over the top of the size of the bar graph which meant that they had made enough money to rebuild their clubhouse.

3. Literature is a very useful way to introduce mathematical concepts because it makes it fun.   It is a lot easier to read an interesting story about kids and a lemonade stand in order to learn how to make a bar graph rather than trying to learn without a fun context. After a child reads this book, Lemonade for Sale, they have learned about keeping track of numbers on a bar graph without even having the intention of picking up math skills.