Math Mentor Text Link Up

Yep, it's Sunday, and time for us to link up with Collaboration Cuties for their Must Read Mentor Text Linky!

Super Sandcastle Saturday (Courtney)

A few years ago I wrote a grant to our district's educational foundation, and received money to purchase math games, manipulatives, and books.  With this grant, I purchased all of the Stuart J. Murphy's MathStart books. I loved them because of how fun the stories are, how well the math topics are discussed, and that there are multiple reading levels.

One of the books is Super Sandcastle Saturday. It is a level 2 book and focuses on measurement.  The story is about 3 friends who participate in a sandcastle building contest when they are at the beach. Prizes are awarded for the tallest tower, deepest moat, and longest wall. The kids use nonstandard units to measure their sandcastles, and are surprised to find that their measurements didn't match the measurements of the judge, who used standard measurement.

This book goes great with an activity that is included in Amy Lemons' I Can Measure Unit. There is a sandcastle activity in which students estimate and measure using standard units. My students really enjoyed this lesson, and it is one that I will be using again! 

Mummy Math: An Adventure in Geometry (Sarah)

This week I have decided to share a brand new text (for me) that I just purchased and plan to use next year, Mummy Math: An Adventure in Geometry by Cindy Neuschwander.

Here is the synopsis from Amazon.com: The Zills family is summoned to Egypt to help find the hidden burial chamber of an ancient pharaoh. But when Matt and Bibi get trapped in the pharaoh’s pyramid, they stumble upon an even bigger mystery. With only each other, their dog Riley, and the geometric hieroglyphics on the walls to help them, the twins must use their math skills to locate the burial chamber—and the way out. Luckily, Matt and Bibi know their stuff when it comes to geometric solids, and so will the readers of this adventure in math!

After reading this synopsis from amazon.com, I "Looked Inside". As usual, the preview did not get to the "meat" of the text and what I wanted to see, so I headed over to GoogleBooks to see if they had a better preview.  They did! This is what made me order the book. Go to GoogleBooks to read how the kids in the story have to use their knowledge of geometric solids and their faces to help solve the mystery...

Looked like a great text to use when learning about geometric solids, so I purchased it for this coming school year!  I would love to hear if anyone else has used this text, so I thought it would be a good one to mention this week.  If you have, please comment! :0)

Link up and read about more math mentor texts at Collaboration Cuties!