Joseph M. Strayhorn

Pictures, Words, and Numbers: Learning Number Sense and Early Math Skills Through Page-finding Joseph M. Strayhorn

This is simply a book of colorful photographs of everyday objects, animals, and scenes, one per page, together with a caption naming each picture and a large page number. It is an enjoyable way for young children to enlarge their vocabularies while looking at eye-catching photos. But it was constructed with another mission in mind: teaching children the art of "page-finding," or turning to a certain page in a book upon hearing a page number. The authors hypothesize that learning this skill develops several early mathematical skills and concepts, including an intuitive feeling for what numbers mean: "number sense." This skill also equips the student to participate in tutoring by telephone, a method of service delivery the authors have been developing for over a decade. In a brief introduction, the authors outline a simple series of steps for teaching children page-finding. The rest of the book consists of 125 photographs, selected for their beauty and simplicity from public domain offerings on the Internet.