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THIS EDITION IS INTENDED FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. With his brother's help, Sam figures out how to measure the size of the lawns he mows. ... Read more

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This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University Library's large-scale digitization efforts. The Library seeks to preserve the intellectual content of items in a manner that facilitates and promotes a variety of uses. The digital reformatting process results in an electronic version of the original text that can be both accessed online and used to create new print copies. The Library also understands and values the usefulness of print and makes reprints available to the public whenever possible. This book and hundreds of thousands of others can be found in the HathiTrust, an archive of the digitized collections of many great research libraries. For access to the University of Michigan Library's digital collections, please see http://www.lib.umich.edu and for information about the HathiTrust, please visit http://www.hathitrust.org ... Read more

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FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. As she adds up the items in the collections that some of her classmates bring to school, Kate tries to come up with a collection of her own that has enough items for her to share. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Great way to encourage new math skills!
This book and series are great!
An interesting story, great pictures and good ideas about using math in our everyday life.

Collect a Collection for Kate
A Collection for Kate is one of a series of books in the Math Matters collection. Each Math Matters book looks at one concept and features a character with a predicament to be solved.

About the book

Written in 1999 by Barbara de Rubertis and illustrated by Gioia Fiammenghi, this 32-page book was published by Kane Press. It is for children ages 5-7 or kindergarten through 2nd grade. The math concept in A Collection for Kate is addition.

The story

The setting for this book is Kate's classroom. The children signed up to bring in a collection and share it with their classmates. Kate had less than one week in which to come up with a collection. Kate went home and rummaged through all her things. She had "a little of this. She had a little of that." But she didn't have enough of anything to make a collection. She wasn't even sure how many things made up a collection so she decided to see what the other kids would bring.

On each day a different child brings in his or her collection and talks about it. Joseph had 2 tote bags with books. Nine books were about snakes and 5 were about lizards. Kate added that up and it came to 14, which sounded like a lot to her. The book continues with the children bringing in their collections: one child collected 2 kinds of magnets - 13 animal magnets and 11 food magnets. Kate was really worried because that added up to 24!

Kate went home and looked again but couldn't come up with a large collection. The book continues with many children sharing their collections, counting them out and Kate adding up the numbers. In some cases it was more than 2 numbers; some she had to add a row of 3 numbers. One child had so many types of pigs (glass, plastic) that Kate had to regroup to find the sum. (For those of you who learned math like I did - the old-fashioned way and don't teach, regrouping is the new way that math is taught. Rather than carrying for addition or borrowing for subtraction, children regroup.)

Kate ended up coming with a very creative collection to share with the children that they all though was "cool" and "a great idea." Her teacher commented on her collection and Kate answered, "Right...for me that just didn't add up."

The illustrations:

This is a very cute book and the pictures are adorable. The children look real. They are all sizes and colors with a variety of expressions on them. The pictures aren't intricate. They are simple faces, for example with a line for a nose and in some cases the faces don't have eyes. It adds to the appeal of the book as a children's book - one just to have fun with and not take too seriously. They are colorful and detailed when necessary. When Ben shows his shell collection, the shells are shaped like shells and in a box labeled with different states on them.

What your child will learn

The point of the book is achieved and achieved well. The point is to have a child read the story and get drawn into it so that he or she doesn't even know he is doing math.

You will find two important pages at the end of this book. One page is an addition chart with problems that you and your child can solve together or perhaps he can solve alone. I really feel after reading this fun book, it won't seem like work.

The other crucial page is the last one, which guides parents and teachers on how to use the book. For example, you can talk about different kinds of things people collect and what Kate might want to collect. You can look at a map and find the states that are mentioned in the book adding Social Studies to the lesson. You can have your child check to make sure Kate's math is correct. Of course it is, but your child won't know that and will want to make sure she is correct! You can have your child count the items in her classmates' collections, talk about less than and more than with your child, and write down some of the math words that he or she may have learned for the first time.

My thoughts:

This book can be used to read to your younger child or the child who can read alone can enjoy it by himself. Many of the words will be much too difficult for a 5-year old but most children at 7 will be able to read this by themselves or with just a little bit of help from you. I think this book (I would probably have the whole series!) is super for children who love math and who don't. If your child loves math he or she will love reading this and doing the activities at the end of the book. Have him do it on a separate sheet so he can do it more than once. You can also make up your own problems and hide them in the book for your child to find the next time he goes to read it.

If your child is math phobic this is a really fun way to get them interested in learning math or at least gets them to learn math even if they never get interested. I highly recommend A Collection for Kate. This book is perfect for the homeschooler also!

This book is available in hardcover or paperback. [...] ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

A Huge Disappointment
We recently purchased this book for our son who is an airplane fanatic.My husband is a pilot and thought this would be a good choice for our son.We were VERY disappointed when we received the book.After paying close to $..., we expected the book to contain more information and pictures of aircraft.There are only 10 pages of text and about 7-8 pictures of planes throughout the book.The book is divided into the following ten sections:
1. What is Aviation
2What is flight
3what is air pressure
4how do birds fly
5what is lift
6how can you create lift at home
7how do airplanes move through the air
8what are teh parts of an airplane
9how are some airplanes different
10 how have airplanes changed our world
Each section contains several short sentences on a topic but does not provide full information.For instance, the section on the parts of the plane omits several important components of airplanes and contains inaccurate information on the parts it does describe.It would have been better if they concentrated on one area and gave complete and accurate information.Save your money and get a more informative and less expensive book. ... Read more

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