Shopping Trip Math

November 1, 2014

Gr 3-5-"Without math, sports would not exist," Marisco informs us. You'd also have difficulty making muffins for 90 people, figuring out the cost of your hockey team's trip, or getting the most goods for your shopping dollars. Numerous practical examples set in busy, two-page entries encourage children to use computation in making everyday decisions. A diverse cast of children and adults face quandaries requiring readers to add, subtract, multiply, divide, or apply percentages or fractions to find a solution. Brief reminders of common math formulas are included within some problems. Most of the math is quickly done with a calculator or paper and pencil, and there's an answer key at the end of the book. The realistic scenarios are generally appealing and well constructed for math practice and learning sensible decision making in numerous aspects of daily life. The recipes in Kitchen Math are a little lackluster, but Shopping and Sports are particularly strong, with the latter covering 12 different sports. Old-fashioned word problems made fresh and new.

Copyright 2014 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.