Frog friends, Matty and Moe, are off with a "Ready, Set, Hop!"They both made it to the rock, but who's in the lead? If Matty hopped 5 hops and Moe hopped 2 more hops than Matty, then the score is 5 to 7. But then they're off again. Any child who can add or subtract can build a simple equation, and Matty and Moe make it fun. As readers count along with Stuart J. Murphy and Jon Buller they will sharpen their problem solving skills and find out which frog is the better hopper.
I was one of those kids who talked all the time in class. I loved telling stories. One day in the 4th Grade, my teacher said, “You tell such good stories, maybe you should try writing some of them down.” “Wow,” I thought. “She thinks my stories are good.” That’s when I started to really enjoy writing.
I was also the class artist. When I wasn’t talking,I was drawing. When I was older, I studied art at the Rhode Island School of Design. That’s where I became interested in visual learning—how we decode and acquire information from graphs, charts, diagrams, models, illustrations and other images.
I became especially interested in educational publishing and have worked on the development of over a dozen major textbook programs, championing visual learning strategies from Pre-K through high school in every major curriculum area.
MATHSTART
The inspiration to write math stories for children was sparked by my work on a high school mathematics program. Visual learning strategies helped teens—who had been characterized as “reluctant learners’—understand difficult math concepts. Putting math in the context of stories based on their experiences made them feel more comfortable with abstract concepts. They actually became eager to apply math to real-life problems. If this approach worked for older students, I began to wonder what might happen if younger children were introduced to math this way!  Even before children can read—or speak many words—they can interpret visual information with ease. The MathStart books use simple stories coupled with diagrams, graphs and other visual models to teach everything from probability and pattern recognition to area, capacity and negative numbers.
The Best Bug Parade, (comparing sizes) was my very first published book. It was absolutely thrilling to see my name in print! I never expected that one day there would 63 MathStart books, split over three levels for ages Pre-K to Grade 4.
Each book includes two pages of review and activities designed to help teachers and parents extend learning beyond the story, along with suggestions of related books by other authors. After all, if a child enjoys learning math through stories, then let’s have more stories! (Pictures, Words & Math: An interview with Stuart J. Murphy )
THE MAIN STREET KIDS' CLUB: A MATHSTART MUSICAL
Now get out your dancing shoes—there is a musical based on six of the MathStart books! The Main Street Kids’ Club was workshopped at Northwestern University and adapted by Scott Ferguson, who also created the perennially popular production of Schoolhouse Rock Live! The songs are terrific. The math is spot on. And the club motto makes my heart sing: “Math Skills are Life Skills!”
STUART J. MURPHY'S I SEE I LEARN
My latest series of books is focused on young children—Preschool and Kindergarten age. I See I Learn books teach social, emotional, health and safety, and cognitive skills, such as how to make friends, build confidence, play safely, work together, manage emotions, and make plans. These skills are important for school readiness and for living happy, healthy, productive lives.  The stories “star” a wonderful bunch of friends who live in See-and-Learn City and attend Ready Set Pre-K. The cast includes Freda, Percy, Emma, Ajay, Camille, and Carlos. And, of course, Pickle, the green bull dog—who happens to have a soft-spot for butterflies—and Miss Cathy, their teacher.
I See I Learn stories are modeled on real-life situations and, just as in real-life, often involve more than one skill. For example, Freda Plans a Picnic is about sequencing, a cognitive skill, but the picnic itself is a social event. Percy Plays It Safe focuses on playground safety skills, but playing successfully in a group also requires self-regulation, an emotional skill.
A book about two frogs and they compete to find out who can hop to various objects in the least amount of hops.
The book cleverly crosses curriculum with maths and together with Moe and Matty you count and add up the amount of hops the frogs take to determine who can hop the least to get to the end. The book is colourful, relevant, fun and interactive with both school and home activities to do once you get to the end of the book. The language is simple and would be an appropriate read for year 1.
“Ready, Set, Hop!” is a perfect book for children who are in kindergarten. It's a mathematics book that talks about how to make equations. These are some things kids in those grades will enjoy and help them stay interested in the material.
It is mostly useful for young children. This book is a powerful story about how frogs can jump and how much each can jump more than the other. Throughout the book, it shows different scenarios of the frogs having a contest who can jump more. At the end of the book, they counted up all the jumps and saw who won.
I would choose this book for my classroom library since representation matters and to normalize books that have math in them. These books make it fun for students to enjoy math problems. Math can be challenging for some students, so it shows pictures and makes it easy for all students to count each jump shown in the book.
Two friends challenge each other to a hopping contest. The author introduces math throughout the story as they compare the number of hops. Fun way to introduce addition to young elementary students.
Have students learn about adding and subtracting numbers. Also they learn about lengths. Teacher can have this lead for a lesson about addition and subtraction. Have this book be a warm up activity. Teacher can tach about lengths of things. ANd introduce measurement. An activity could be measuring objects using objects (ex. how long is a table using paper clips)
This book can be used for 3d grade stuudents. This book talks about equations. The book talks about howw to add equations together. The book talks about Moe and Matty. They are both frogs. This book talks about how students could image a frog hopping to add or subtract.
This book is about Matty and Moe hopping to rocks and counting as they hop. This is a great book to teach children the concept of adding and subtracting.