ONE HUNDRED HUNGRY ANTS
Author: Elinor J. Pinczes
Illustrator: Bonnie Mackain
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Number of pages: 32
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin (USA) First published in: 1993 Format: Picturebook Is the mathematical focus explicit in the story? Yes Is this story part of a mathematics story series? Yes (Elinor J. Pinczes's Maths Books) Preview and/or purchase this book on the Amazon websites: UK, USA, AUS, IND, CAN Synopsis by the author/publisher
One hundred hungry ants head towards a picnic to get yummies for their tummies, but stops to change their line formation, showing different divisions of one hundred, cause them to lose both time and food in the end. |
“"Stop!" yelled the little ant. "We're moving way too slow! More of the food will be gone unless we hurry up. So ... with 4 lines of 25 we'd get there soon. I know."”
Official review by MathsThroughStories.org:
Elinor J. Pinczes's ‘One Hundred Hungry Ants’ (1993) follows the story of 100 hungry ants who are racing to a picnic far far away for some food. Initially, the ants are moving in a single file, then one of the ants suggests that they could get to the picnic quicker if they move in more than one lines. They first try moving in two lines of 50 ants, then four lines of 25, and so on. One of the great things about this story is that readers can clearly see how knowledge of division can help meaningfully solve a problem. The page illustrations of the ants moving in different numbers of lines also help young children see what division looks like visually. We can see this story being used by teachers and parents to provide a meaningful and fun context for children to learn about division using resources, such as blocks of Unifix cubes, to represent different total numbers of ants in each line. All in all, we highly recommend ‘One Hundred Hungry Ants’ to teachers and parents of children, aged 5+, and the story serves as a great foundation to another story by Elinor, ‘A Remainder of One’, which is also about division but with a remainder.
Recommended age range:
5 years old +
Relevant mathematics topics:
Division; Multiplication; Skip counting
Possible teaching activities:
At MathsThroughStories.org, we believe that stories can be meaningfully incorporated in mathematics teaching in different ways. Thus, we are inviting you to share your experience of how you have used this story in your mathematics lesson with other members of the community. By sharing your experience with us, you will be added to our team of On-line Contributors here, where you can also find our submission guideline.
Elinor J. Pinczes's ‘One Hundred Hungry Ants’ (1993) follows the story of 100 hungry ants who are racing to a picnic far far away for some food. Initially, the ants are moving in a single file, then one of the ants suggests that they could get to the picnic quicker if they move in more than one lines. They first try moving in two lines of 50 ants, then four lines of 25, and so on. One of the great things about this story is that readers can clearly see how knowledge of division can help meaningfully solve a problem. The page illustrations of the ants moving in different numbers of lines also help young children see what division looks like visually. We can see this story being used by teachers and parents to provide a meaningful and fun context for children to learn about division using resources, such as blocks of Unifix cubes, to represent different total numbers of ants in each line. All in all, we highly recommend ‘One Hundred Hungry Ants’ to teachers and parents of children, aged 5+, and the story serves as a great foundation to another story by Elinor, ‘A Remainder of One’, which is also about division but with a remainder.
Recommended age range:
5 years old +
Relevant mathematics topics:
Division; Multiplication; Skip counting
Possible teaching activities:
At MathsThroughStories.org, we believe that stories can be meaningfully incorporated in mathematics teaching in different ways. Thus, we are inviting you to share your experience of how you have used this story in your mathematics lesson with other members of the community. By sharing your experience with us, you will be added to our team of On-line Contributors here, where you can also find our submission guideline.
