Missing Mittens

MathStart Level 1

by Stuart J. Murphy, G. Brian Karas (Illustrator)

Every animal on Farmer Bill's farm is missing one mitten.Readers can investigate odd and even numbers as they unravel this mitten mystery!

Genres: Mathematics, Picture Books, Counting, Childrens, Storytime, Number, 1st Grade

33 pages, Paperback

First published November 15, 2000

About the author

PICTURES & WORDS, STORIES & BOOKS
MathStart http://www.mathstart.net
I See I Learn http://www.iseeilearn.com

I was one of those kids who talked all the time in class. I loved telling stories. One day in the 4th Grade, my teacher said, “You tell such good stories, maybe you should try writing some of them down.” “Wow,” I thought. “She thinks my stories are good.” That’s when I started to really enjoy writing.

I was also the class artist. When I wasn’t talking,I was drawing. When I was older, I studied art at the Rhode Island School
of Design. That’s where I became interested in visual learning—how we decode and acquire information from graphs, charts, diagrams, models, illustrations and other images.

I became especially interested in educational publishing and have worked on the development of over a dozen major textbook programs, championing visual learning strategies from Pre-K through high school in every major curriculum area.

MATHSTART

The inspiration to write math stories for children was sparked by my work on a high school mathematics program. Visual learning strategies helped teens—who had been characterized as “reluctant learners’—understand difficult math concepts. Putting math in the context of stories based on their experiences made them feel more comfortable with abstract concepts. They actually became eager to apply math to real-life problems.
If this approach worked for older students, I began to wonder what might happen if younger children were introduced to math this way!

Even before children can read—or speak many words—they can interpret visual information with ease. The MathStart books use simple stories coupled with diagrams, graphs and other visual models to teach everything from probability and pattern recognition to area, capacity and negative numbers.

The Best Bug Parade, (comparing sizes) was my very first published book. It was absolutely thrilling to see my name in print! I never expected that one day there would 63 MathStart books, split over three levels for ages Pre-K to Grade 4.

Each book includes two pages of review and activities designed to help teachers and parents extend learning beyond the story, along with suggestions of related books by other authors. After all, if a child enjoys learning math through stories, then let’s have more stories!
(Pictures, Words & Math: An interview with Stuart J. Murphy )

THE MAIN STREET KIDS' CLUB: A MATHSTART MUSICAL

Now get out your dancing shoes—there is a musical based on six of the MathStart books! The Main Street Kids’ Club was workshopped at Northwestern University and adapted by Scott Ferguson, who also created the perennially popular production of Schoolhouse Rock Live!
The songs are terrific. The math is spot on. And the club motto makes my heart sing: “Math Skills are Life Skills!”

STUART J. MURPHY'S I SEE I LEARN

My latest series of books is focused on young children—Preschool and Kindergarten age.
I See I Learn books teach social, emotional, health and safety, and cognitive skills, such as how to make friends, build confidence, play safely, work together, manage emotions, and make plans. These skills are important for school readiness and for living happy, healthy, productive lives.

The stories “star” a wonderful bunch of friends who live in See-and-Learn City and attend Ready Set Pre-K. The cast includes Freda, Percy, Emma, Ajay, Camille, and Carlos. And, of course, Pickle, the green bull dog—who happens to have a soft-spot for butterflies—and Miss Cathy, their teacher.

I See I Learn stories are modeled on real-life situations and, just as in real-life, often involve more than one skill. For example, Freda Plans a Picnic is about sequencing, a cognitive skill, but the picnic itself is a social event. Percy Plays It Safe focuses on playground safety skills, but playing successfully in a group also requires self-regulation, an emotional skill.

Each book is reviewed by a tea

Reviews

[Vanessa Fabrizi · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Missing Mittens" is a fun kids book that teaches math through a story. Farmer Bill is looking for his animals' mittens, and as he searches, kids learn about counting and simple math. The book introduces odd and even numbers in a clever way - mittens come in pairs, so when one is missing, it creates an odd number. This helps kids understand these concepts easily. The book has bright, colorful pictures of the farm that make it easy for kids to see the math ideas. It's great for learning at home or in school. You could use real mittens or toys to play counting games and practice odd and even numbers. This makes learning math feel like fun, not work. The book is good for young kids who are just starting to learn about numbers. It's a nice way to make math interesting and not scary. Overall this book is a great choice for students to enjoy math and understand the concept of odd and even numbers.

[Joseph Scarborough · Rating 4 out of 5]

One thing that I thought this book would be useful for is introducing the concepts of even and odd to students along with basic counting and adding skills. I think this book would work well at the kindergarten grade level since it provides a clear demonstration of even and odd numbers. Another subject area that this book would work well in would be seasons and animals since the book incorporates elements of winter. It would also work well with discussing animals because it brings up parts of different animals. Questions I would ask during this book would be “is there a pattern to odd and even numbers?”. One way that I think this book could be incorporated into a lesson would be to have students use manipulatives to make groups of numbers in even and odd.

[Sienna Phillips · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book for fall/winter! It is a great introduction to odd and even numbers for first grade. This series actually has multiple levels of books for different grades, and I have used the one below this for my higher-level kiddos in PreK. For grade one, this book helps with patterns, multiples of two, and adding/subtracting. It is also a cute and funny story for young readers. The charts in the back of the book are great visuals for a lesson on odd and even. I will definitely use this in future math lessons!

[Darin Johnston · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book for both literacy and math skills! Looking at odd and even, addition, even a little multiplication if you felt brave! Farmer Bill's looking for a missing mitten, and encounters the animals on his farm. We are dealing with how many mittens each animal or group may need, but there's always one less. Why? Ask the goat at the end!

4 stars as the illustration are great, the concept is great, but rhymes are a bit stained, and it might be much for a student to follow along with.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Introduces math concepts "odd" and "even" to children. I lol'd at one of the pictures of where the cow wore her mittens, that's all I'm going to say about that. Kudos to Brian Karas for that one. This was in the three year old room at church and even though I'm not sure that they're old enough to get the odd and even concept, at least the terminology is introduced.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cute rhymes, cute illustrations, even and odd numbers.

[☼Bookish in Virginia☼ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Time Machine
Book intro's idea of even and odd numbers, January 4, 2005

We loved Murphy's "Henry the Fourth", but we didn't particularly like this book. While the artwork is delightful, the rhymes are clumsy, and worse, the premise just is not very interesting. At least, finding out what happened to the cow's utter-mittens did not engage my kids (almost 3 and 5).

On the plus side, the book did give my almost 5 y.o. and myself a place to start talking about even and odd. And the way that the artist showed the pairs of mittens and the missing mitten in outline made it easy to point out what the story was taking about.

But I'd give this book a pass unless you are desparate to find an edutainment introduction to even/odd numbers.

[Jenilyn Willis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked out this book because I knew that Stuart Murphy wrote children's books geared towards math concepts, and I love math so I wanted to read at least one. This one dealt with odd and even numbers in the form of mittens. I thought it did an excellent job of explaining the concept, and the pictures would really help children understand it. I also like the section at the end that provides extra information as to how you can reinforce these math concepts in your classroom or at home along with this book.

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh, I loved this one with the old timey, homey feel illustrations of the farmer in his red ling underwear and finnally he and his aimals are gathered roud the old fashioed iron stove keeping warm. This title has missingmittens that belong to the various farm animals and the book is teaching the concept of even and odd numberswhich it visually does very well. Appropriate for a school or a teachable moment, but not suitable for library storytimes. This title receives four stars, just because I personally like itand it evokes memories, not because it is a great picture book.

[Candice Mckinnon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Missing Mittens deals with odd and even numbers throughout the story. It is a cute, rhyming book that counts up to 8, but emphasizes odd and even numbers. Children would really enjoy guessing the mystery of what happened to the other mittens. There are also fun games and suggestions in the index of the book that a teacher could use to make a lesson out of the book. This is one of my favorite math children's books.

[Shakita · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is by Stuart Murphy who is known for his integration of math into his books. This book focuses on working with odd and even numbers. The students will notice that the animals need mittens to make it an even number. When reading this book to the class, the children can act out the story and we could count how many mittens the students need. The students can say whether a student has an even amount of mittens or an odd amount.

[Zilha B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is about a little boy who lost his mitten. As he goes in search of his mitten, the farmer realizes that everyone seems to have the same problem. This book teaches students about odd and even numbers in the form of mittens. The book does a great job by showing the pictures that show one mitten is odd and two are even. An extension activity for this book could be to have students draw their own even or odd picture of a missing item.

[Julia B · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book would be a great teaching tool for even and odd numbers, a concept my students struggled with last year. After reading the book out loud, my students could participate in an art activity where they would draw a line down a sheet of paper, label the two sides "even" and "odd", and represent even and odd numbers by drawing pictures of chosen objects (buttons, cookies, etc).

[Linh Tong · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would use this book to teach students the concept of even and odd. I will put piles of buttons on the table. Students will decide if the pile is even or odd. There will be different piles of buttons. They will then use the buttons to add and subtract. Questions to ask: Do you get an even or odd number when you add two even numbers together? Two odds? How about an odd and an even?

[Dorotheaholcomb · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is suitable for teaching children about odd and even numbers in a non-threatening way. My son was having a little difficulty learning odd vs. even and library books we checked out just overwhelmed him. This teaches the concept in a fun way and by the end of the book, my 6 year old understood odds and evens perfectly.

[Miss Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Farmer Bill is on a mitten hunt. Everywhere he looks there are animals with odd numbers of mittens. Since everyone knows that mittens always come in pairs/even numbers, Farmer Bill is determined to find the ones that are missing. Nice twist ending.

Nice mitten story with an introduction to the idea of odd and even numbers.

[Shannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an introduction to even and odd, but I didn't think it elaborated directly enough on the topic. I also thought it wasn't useful to have the words "even" and "odd" written in script - most early readers aren't going to be able to make sense of that if they're looking at the page.

[Christina Camp · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is about a farmer in the winter time. It teaches the importance of even and odd numbers and why we need to knwo the difference. It has the actual number and the number word on each page so that students can begin to recognize that they go together.

[Chels Patterson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Really disliked reading this book, I stumbled over the wording, because it just doesn't flow and jumps. Honestly I thought pages were missing, they were not. Horrible as a counting book for kids too.

[Christine Turner]

Every animal on Farmer Bill's farm is missing one mitten. Readers can investigate odd and even numbers as they unravel this mitten mystery!

Subject: Counting -- Juvenile literature
Numbers, Natural -- Juvenile literature

Foucus skill set: odds and evens.

[Kate Hastings · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my FAVORITE illustrators has a fun book about numbers odd and even. Also fun for winter!

[Alicia · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story is kind of silly, but I like that this book talks about odd numbers and even numbers. I like the visual that it gives for each number.

[(NS) Maria]

Mitten

[Shareena · Rating 4 out of 5]

teaches odd and even numbers up to 10

[Edna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Farmer Bill is searching for his own and the other animals' missing mittens and finally spies goat chewing on something.

[Betty Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a cute book to teach the concept of odd and even numbers by mittens. The pictures are colorful and the story if fun.

[Esther]

First Grade: Odd Numbers

Rhyming.

[Elanor]

All by herself!

[Miss Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

didn't love this about a every animal missing one mitten on a farm until the culprit of the missing mittens is found.

[Taryn Dean]

Covers odd and even numbers... have students bring in mittens and gloves and do a visual hands on demonstration of the book.