by Charlotte A. Huck, Joseph A. Smith (Illustrator), Charlotte S. Huck
Reading level: Ages 4-8
Hardcover - 24 pages
What do lumpy toads, hooting owls, furry bats, skinny witches, ghastly ghosts, yowling cats, and brave mice have in common? They all parade through the spine-tingling pages of Charlotte Huck's imaginative countdown and revel in an especially eerie night! But the mice get the last Boo (or maybe young readers do) in this enchanting book that goes from one to ten and back again, and dazzles with its ticklish scratchboard pictures. A positively creepy-crawly read-aloud for Halloween, storytime, and anytime!

You can purchase this book at Amazon.com, or for more thrifty individuals willing to put in some work, check out this location

Purpose: For students to develop an understanding of the correspondence between numbers and actual quantities.

Materials: Handmade, or purchased, cut-outs of ghosts; about 400 mini-marshmallows (or enough for each student, or group, to have about 20); 20 sandwich bags, or enough for each student; 10-sided dice, enough for each student, or group, to have 1; a bell or noise-making device.

Procedure:

Read "A Creepy Countdown" to the class.

Have a brief talk about the characters/creatures in the book and, if possible, lead the discussion around to pets.sExplain to the class that they're all going to have a really neat pet today,sa ghost! (You could also pretend to enlist the class's help with feeding the teacher's pet ghosts).

Pass out ghost cut-outs to students.

Pass out a bag of marshmallows to each student (each bag should contain about 20 marshmallows). Be sure to stress that marshmallows are lnot to be eaten until snack time!

Pass out one 10-sided die to each student.

Explain to students that this is feeding time for the ghosts and they only eat marshmallows. Whenever the teacher rings the bell, students roll the 10-sided die and place the corresponding number of marshmallows onto the cut-out of the ghost.

If students grow bored with activity, a more difficult addition is to let lthem yell out "Boo to you!" whenever the number of marshmallows on the ghost equals 10.

An additional variation, with possibilities for addition and subtraction development,lis to start the ghost with 20 marshmallows already on it and take away the number of marshmallows rolled. Once they get to zero, or must take away more than what's available, they could get to shout "Boo to you!". Oflcourse, they would get to eat the lmarshmallows as they subtract them!

Have icons or cut-outs of the characters from the book (ex. bats, skeletons, etc.) represent their corresponding number from the book (bat = 5, scarecrow = 1, etc) and have students add, subtract, multiply, or divide using only icons from the book.

Have a play/recitation where groups of children get to be the characters from the book. Each group could chorally read the portion of the book with their character, and all of the class could shout "Boo to you!"

Students could create a Halloween version of Monopoly ("Scary-opoly"). Using the characters from the book, they could create street names, money, and pieces. (ex. Boo-Bucks, Go to Graveyard, Toad Parking, Toadwalk, Batlantic Ave, etc.)

For other children's books you can incorporate into your classroom to teach mathematics, check out Elaine Young's children's literature page at http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/Y/Elaine.Young-1/literature.html.