Mitsumasa Anno (born March 20, 1926) was a Japanese illustrator and writer of children's books, known best for picture books with few or no words. He received the international Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1984 for his "lasting contribution to children's literature".
This book is brilliant! It's math for visual learners. If I had had this book as a child, my problems with math would have faded away. If you have a child with dyslexia or dyscalculia, try this with them. It will probably help.
Anno has taken some of the very basic concepts of math and broken them down so a child can understand. Things like, why do we count? why do we measure? how do we measure? how do functions work? It's all presented in pictures and story form so those (like me) who are scared of numbers aren't scared off. You may not even recognize it as math, but it is.
My library only has this book, but I see there are at least three volumes. I hope they are still in print. Every teacher of early elementary grades should have Anno's Math Games.
At the end this book show the comment for each chapter. POINT, graph - A chapter is about look at the house, horse, doll, fruit, etc. around us like dots, 1 house for 1 dot to be easy to count. MEASURE VOLUME - Another chapter is about why we need litter or anything else to measure volume, to know which ones is larger without count each dot. COMPARE - Others is about finding difference between two picture.
Excellent book. This book expanded the way I think about teaching my kids math and pre-math concepts. My four year old adores it and asks for it often.
Each chapter of this book has math games for students to solve. For example, in the Magic Machine, numbers get put into a machine and change. When 5 goes in, 6 comes out; when 6 goes in, 7 goes out; and 4 becomes 5. Students have to figure out what happens in the machine. Provide manipulatives to have students follow along with the story to solve each story. Because of the way the book is set up, teachers can select a few chapters and set them up as quick centers, perhaps as file folder games for early finishers. Not all of the math games are aligned with elementary school standards, so teachers should choose the chapters that are appropriate to their curriculum.
Weird--definitely didn't mesh with my learning/thinking style, and I think that's a problem with me. I'm hoping it will help my son to think "out of the box" a bit. Encourages children to recognize patterns, problem-solve, see things differently, which eventually leads to a lesson on measurement, counting, graphic arts, perspective, etc. but in a very obscure and indirect way... Very unusual, but I think it could really work.
This is more for like 1st or 2nd grade because I skipped a chapter on counting, which I already knew. It was like learning and you didn't really know it, and going over stuff I already learned but in a better way. The best chapter was when they had a machine that could change things to different things.