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MathStart Level 2
Get Up and Go!
"Brrring!!" An alarm clock rings. It's time to get up and go! A smart dog builds timelines to keep track of the time going by as he helps a second grader get ready for school. There's not a moment's rest until her school bus is out of sight. Full color.
40 pages, Paperback
First published July 19, 1996
4 people are currently reading
107 people want to read
About the author
Stuart J. Murphy
158 books60 followersPICTURES & WORDS, STORIES & BOOKS
MathStart http://www.mathstart.net
I See I Learn http://www.iseeilearn.com
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.
Each book is reviewed by a tea
MathStart http://www.mathstart.net
I See I Learn http://www.iseeilearn.com
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.
Each book is reviewed by a tea
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
November 18, 2011
This book is good for teaching about elapsed time. I actually taught a lesson using this book. It talks about time in a linear fashion, by putting the elapsed time on a timeline.
March 15, 2012
This is a really fun story about waking up and getting ready for school. The rhyming narrative and colorful illustrations make this a fun book to read aloud.
The one who keeps the little girl on track in this story is her dog, which I liked a lot, because it's usually a nagging mom (me) in our family. I also love how the story shows that each individual action takes up a chunk of time and that they all add up. Even pausing to pet the cat can slow you down enough considerably, especially if you are running late. I'm always reminding our girls to stay focused and have a ten-minute alarm set (before we have to leave the house) so they know that they have to stay on track in order to catch the bus. And we enjoyed adding up the minutes to see how long her morning routine took.
Overall, we really enjoyed this story together. We like the Mathstart books and will continue to search for more of the books in the MathStart Level 2 series at our local library.
The one who keeps the little girl on track in this story is her dog, which I liked a lot, because it's usually a nagging mom (me) in our family. I also love how the story shows that each individual action takes up a chunk of time and that they all add up. Even pausing to pet the cat can slow you down enough considerably, especially if you are running late. I'm always reminding our girls to stay focused and have a ten-minute alarm set (before we have to leave the house) so they know that they have to stay on track in order to catch the bus. And we enjoyed adding up the minutes to see how long her morning routine took.
Overall, we really enjoyed this story together. We like the Mathstart books and will continue to search for more of the books in the MathStart Level 2 series at our local library.
November 22, 2012
This book teaches the concept of having a time-line. After we read the book, students can create their own time-line to plan for a party. The party will start at 6 P.M. Students have to plan the things that they need to do from 4 to 6 P.M to get ready for the party. They will then write it on the time-line and estimate the amount of time needed to do those activities.
March 15, 2013
In this story, a little girl is getting ready for the day and is using number lines to add how how many minutes she is spending getting ready. It also uses rhyme. This book can be used in first grade to begin looking at number lines or the passing of time and how it can be shown and added by using a number line.
April 1, 2015
My six year old enjoyed reading this story with me, though he got a bit tired of mommy's insistence in counting the number lines to find out the total number of minutes, especially as the very long number lines made it easy to lose one's place. Still, for a book that's basically about math, he got some good enjoyment out of it!
December 3, 2012
This book is an excellent book for students who are beginning to add. It is also great avenue to help tell student notice that everything they do takes time. I would read this to first graders and 2nd graders.
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April 24, 2015Time lines -- Girl getting ready for school keeps track of how many minutes each process takes by line segments and strings them together to add up how many minutes she takes.
October 1, 2010
Great for introducing time lines!
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews