Don’t leave out the math activities for World Book Day! Use these book-themed math lessons to work right across the curriculum.
Math activities for World Book Day
World Book Day is a celebration of books, stories, and reading that takes place each year in March. In 2020 World Book Day will be on Thursday 5th March.
Many home-educating groups, schools, and early years settings celebrate with book-themed events and invite their children (& parents / staff!) to dress up as their favourite book character.
You can have lots of fun theming a whole day, or a whole week of activities around books – and don’t leave out the math lessons! You can use these ideas fun math ideas for World Book Day to share the love of reading right across the curriculum.
Through these activities, children can:
:: survey opinions on reading habits, likes and dislikes
:: use Venn diagrams to display information
:: use a tally chart to display information
:: take part in a math quiz about books
:: have fun playing with numbers
Book-themed math activity: Venn diagrams
A Venn diagram is a visual way to show how two or more groups of things relate to each other. They let us clearly see how two or more sets compare and contrast with one another.
There are many questions you can ask your children to compare their likes and dislikes about books.
Stick up a variety of questions around the room, or have a different question each day of book week, and invite your children to sign up in the correct place on the Venn diagram to match their preferences.
Try some of these questions:
:: do your like this fictional character or this one?
:: do you like to read in bed or on the sofa?
:: do you like fiction or non-fiction?
:: do you like graphic novels or poems?
:: do you like this author or this author?
You can find a further Venn diagram lesson with free printable here.
Book-themed math activity: tally charts
A tally chart is a quick and simple way to note down information, where we skip count in fives to quickly add up the figures.
Your children can work in pairs to survey the whole class, recording their findings on a tally chart. Have them think up their own question or use these ideas:
:: do you like reading: yes, no, sometimes?
:: have you read these books: option one, option two, option three?
:: have you read anything by these authors?
:: do you read on your own, with your mum or with your dad?
:: do you like to read comics, poems, chapter books and non-fiction?
Extend the activity by converting the tally chart-gathered information in a bar graph.
And here’s a great tally chart lesson linked to the story of The Gingerbread man.
Book-themed math activity: Book Number Quiz
Host a book quiz all about numbers. Grab a book, any book, and have fun with a rapid fire round of questions all based on math.
Try these questions to get you started:
:: how many pages are in your book?
:: what’s the fourth word on the sixth page?
:: what’s the last word in your book?
:: what’s the first word in your book?
:: how many words are there in the first sentence of your book?
:: how many chapters are in your book?
:: what year . was your book published?
:: how many years before / after your were born was the book published?
:: what’s ten more than the number of pages in your book?
:: what’s three less than the number of words on the first page?
:: estimate how many words there are in the whole book? (number of words on a line x number of lines on a page x pages in your book)
Storybooks about circles
There are many brilliant books with math themes. Host a story time with these books about circles
More easy activities to World Book Day
Fill your whole day or week with activities for World Book Day with these book-themed lessons.
Leave a Reply