Counting books
The purpose of this resource is to provide suggestions to whānau about how they can use different picture books to develop maths knowledge.
About this resource
This section provides some ideas for how you can raise awareness and share mathematics using everyday experiences and resources found around your home. It includes ideas for supporting your children’s learning in all areas of mathematics: geometry, measurement, statistics, algebra, and numbers.
There are thousands of books devoted to teaching children about the numbers 1–10 and beyond. Some of these have wonderful illustrations and provide engaging counting practice. Sometimes these books have a story to follow, like “Ten in the Bed” and other times they are simply a series of pages with things to count. Praise for accurate counting and asking children to anticipate the next number are both important things to do when sharing the book.
Counting books
- Great counting! This is four. What number do you think comes next?
- We read this starting at 1 and going up to 10. Let’s read it backwards this time. Where will we start? Let’s practice counting backwards.
- Let’s make our own counting book. (Use stickers or cut-out pictures from magazines and make a book with the numbers your child is learning about or ones they are interested in.)
Some suggested books
- The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
- 100 Things by Masayuki Sebe
- The Most Amazing Hide-and-Seek Numbers Book by Robert Crowther
- Ten Apples Up On Top! by Dr Seuss
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