Story Books For Low-Anxiety Math

Do you use a math text or worksheets? You can use them in conjunction with this series of math stories. Spend some time perusing your "I Love Math" books and use the stories to prepare children for upcoming challenges. Look for concept correlation between math themes in the storybooks and math themes in upcoming chapters. In other words, use the stories to help children "get their feet wet" when it comes to difficult ideas.

Share the dialogue in the speech bubbles and discuss the concepts that appear in small text at the bottom of the page. Walk your child through the steps as needed. An example: at the end,of the title story of "How do Octopi Eat Pizza Pie", children are asked to determine if there are enough pizzas for everyone in line and, if not, to tell how many more are needed. This was very challenging to one little boy that I work with -- the first time around. He needed to be walked through the process of counting the people in line, counting the number of pizzas the octopus/ baker was holding and finding the difference. After he had heard the story a couple times (over a period of time), he hadn't memorized the answer, but the steps had become very automatic to him. He was doing a two-step word problem -- long before the official curriculum asked him to.

Some problems are harder than others. Don't push, but hope your child gets it second time around.