Mathematics in a Story

I decided to read Lemonade For Sale  by Stuart J. Murphy. This quirky story was about 4 friends who were members of the Elm Street Kids Club. They decided to start a lemonade stand in order to fix up their withering clubhouse. One of the friends, Sheri, tracked the groups progress on a bar graph. She plotted cups sold on the y axis and days of the week on the x axis.
In the beginning business was soaring, the group put all of their effort in they even dressed up and wore lemon hats. The club mascot, Petey the Parrot was even helping to attract customers.
Until one day when business was not so good. The group was no selling anywhere near the amount they had been in previous days. They then discovered that Jed the Juggler was juggling and performing down the street from them and taking away their customers! On the Friday at the end of the week, Jed the Juggler performed his juggling next to the lemonade stand, and on this day the stand made more money than ever before.
The pictures and visuals in this book are very clear and simple. Not a lot of fuss in the background lets the students focus on the making of the graphs.

The main math concept that was presented in this book was graphing. Sheri used a bar graph in order to track the teams progress with the lemonade stand. She would plot how many cups of lemonade were sold for each day, and compare the progress. Some could even argue that you could use the bars to make predictions about future days or future weeks. Sheri and the group can easily see booming sales in the beginning and by the graph they can recognize the severe drop in sales when Jed comes to town and steals away customers. The bar graph is a good indicator of business growth and also decreasing sales. But when the two forces combine it is clear through the bar graph that the Elm Street Kids Club are back in business with booming sales. I think that picture books is a great way to both teach and learn math concepts. I know for me personally I am a visually learner and get things when I see them done out. And it helps me even more when I can see them in context in real life situations. I think that especially for younger kids which a lot of these books are aimed at it teaches them somewhat complex concepts about math easily in ways that they can understand in situations that they might actually be in, like selling lemonade at a stand!