A Fair Bear Share (MathStart 2, 1)

This was suggested as part of our math this year. It is a fun and easy read.

Story line: four young bears collect ingredients to make a blueberry pie, but in the end, they do not have enough ingredients because one bear played instead of working, so that bear goes to do their work and brings more back. So the book teaches consequences if you don't do your part and it shows the distracted bear made a good choice in the end by doing the work even if it was late. Then everyone gets to have a pie.Math wise, the book adds up all the baskets of each ingredient and then adds the last bears ingredients in at the end. It shows groups of ten for the tens column and when ones add up to ten how it moves to the tens column. Pairing the story with the math really helped visualize the concept and should be immediately practiced with hand son counters etc. I really enjoyed how this book made math more visually approachable.

This book does a great job of combining story telling and introducing math concepts.

We got this book for use in our homeschooling. The kids really love it. They even read it just for the story.

I like the book for my kids, so far we have read it once and they seemed to enjoy it. I like how it introduces the math concept of regrouping and arranging objects in the tens and ones gruops. My oldest son (6 years old and autistic) is still having a little hard time understanding the regrouping but I think if we continue reading the book and actually use some kind of manipulatives he should be able to get the concept.

As an educator, I have found this book to be a really fun and successful review for students who are learning addition. As a parent, this book is simply a treat! The story is adorable, with a valuable lesson about teamwork. I enjoy using a base 10 set of manipulatives together with this book- it makes it possible for younger children to attempt to tackle the addition problems. Excellent read (and math tool) all around!

Great book for teaching math concepts.

My daughter is using these to teach a preschool class at a school and they have been wonderful and incredibly useful We bought a number of the books and each one is well done and interesting to the kids.

Recommended for age 4/5+, the book explains how groups of tens can be made to understand numbers and addition, through a nice story of bears collecting items for making their favourite pie.

Lovely story with maths activities. Good for teaching about regrouping and counting in 10s to add 2 digit numbers. One of the bears doesn't do their "share" of the collecting the ingredients so not enough is collected to make the pie. That bear then goes and collects some more which gives the opportunity to add 2 larger numbers together. The story isn't about division but you could extend the concept by working out how much of the pie each of the bears would get.

A very good story about adding up numbers in a visual way. My 4-year-old likes it so much. She even started to read on her own! The pictures are very informative.