Stuart Murphy's "Monkeys on Parade" focuses on skip counting. The book is about performing monkeys that participate in a parade. Monkey cyclists spin along two-by-two, with the text inspiring counting by twos. Adults can encourage kids to count, "3, 6, 9, 12" as monkey tumblers roll past in groups of three and "4, 8, 12, 16" as a monkey band marches in rows of four. The book is part of Murphy's "MathStart" series of picture books, each of which includes ideas for easy-to-do activities. One "Monkey Parade" idea is to help children look for foods and objects packaged in groups of twos, threes and fours while in the supermarket.
In Murphy's book "Mall Mania," a group of elementary school students and their teacher help to count shoppers as they enter a mall during a special event. They use a variety of strategies to count efficiently, such as grouping by tens and skip counting. Follow-up activities include "domino addition," in which a player picks up two dominoes and adds the sum of their four numbers. The player then compares his sum to that of his partner. The person with the highest total wins.
Marilyn Burns, the renowned author of many books for elementary math educators, is a proponent of connecting picture books to math instruction. In an article for the Scholastic "Instructor" website, Burns notes that picture books "spark students' imaginations in ways that exercises in textbooks or workbooks often don't." She suggests incorporating Mem Fox's book "Night Noises" into a lesson on mental math. As children listen to the story about Lily Laceby's 90th birthday party, adults can help them count and add up the many guests (two sons, three daughters, 14 grandchildren, and so on) without pencil and paper.
Leo Lionni's book "Inch by Inch" focuses on a clever inchworm that persuades a robin not to eat it by demonstrating how it can measure the robin's tail and other interesting objects. Burns used this book as part of a lesson on measurement. She asked a group of second graders to help her identify "inchworm" objects in the classroom that were about one-inch-long (quarters, stamps, crayon stubs and inch tiles) and to use them to measure other objects. The students eventually progressed to using a 12-inch ruler.