The rhythm and the bright, bold colors of this wonderful story, Fish Eyes: A Book You Can Count On,
Introduce kids to both counting and basic addition with this concept book. Younger children will enjoy counting the fish and older students who are learning basic addition will make sense of, “3 smiling fish, plus me make 4”.
Reading books like Fish Eyes to your students will help them connect math ideas to their own experiences, prepare them for new math concepts and skills, and reinforce concepts you have already taught.
After reading and rereading the book a few times, take some time to count fish and discuss the shapes of the fish in the pictures.
Encourage students to create their own fish
Students can trace ovals, circles or triangles and cut them out to make fish using tracers similar to the ones in the image below. Some students prefer to draw their own shapes and cut them out.
Tip!! If students are drawing their own fish, encourage them to make their fish bigger than their hands to avoid getting pages of teeny weeny fish!
Depending on your students abilities, provide class book pages similar to the ones below. Children then glue on as many or as few fish as they want on their “book page”.
For counting or addition…
A class book page could look similar to the ones below or make up your own. Put a frame sentence on the bottom of the page and the students who are able can fill in their name and the number of fish they glued on their page or complete the addition frame sentence.
Staple the pages together and bring the books out at story time. Each student who wants to, reads their page out loud to the class, if not, read it for them.
Teacher tip – keep class books short
If the class books are too long the children will have difficulty sitting still as they are being read. Instead make two or three shorter books depending on your class size and read them at different times throughout the day.
In a class of twenty children for instance, have some children create a book with round fish, another group can make a book about triangle fish and another group can make a book about oval shaped fish.
Lois Ehlert is an award winning author and illustrator and has created many more delightful and colorful books. See Fish Eyes A Book You Can Count On and many more of her picture books here…