Count, Add, Subtract! Fun with Math, Music, and Movement

PreS-Gr 1—More children might enjoy math if it was presented with bright, breezy music like in these 15 songs in jazz, country, Latin, hip-hop, and rock musical styles. Palmer and his guest musicians provide excellent vocals and give terrific instrumental performances on guitars, keyboards, drums, percussion, accordion, trumpet, trombone, tuba, saxophone, clarinet, and flute. An enthusiastic children's chorus also joins in on the songs. The fun numbers are intended to help children develop mathematical thinking skills, giving them the ability to solve basic addition and subtraction problems. The songs are organized sequentially in a progression of skills, including counting forward and backward, adding and subtracting one, doubles facts, doubles plus one, skip counting, combinations that equal 10, and fact families. Among the tunes are "Count Up, Count Down," "Naming Numbers," "One More, One Less," "Doubles Facts," "Add One to the Double," "Switcheroo," "Skip Count," "Ways to Get to Ten," "Make Nine Into Ten," "Countin' by Twos with the Odd Numbers," and "Five Ate Thirteen." After the songs are played once, they are repeated, either in an instrumental only or a no-answer version (allowing listeners to supply the answers to the math problems). Classroom teachers and homeschooling parents will welcome this fun way to teach early math concepts.—Beverly Wrigglesworth, San Antonio Public Library, TX