I'm beginning to develop a new-found appreciation for math-based storybooks. Initially, The Hershey's Milk Chocolate Fraction Book left a bad taste in my mouth, pun very much intended. I found the book to be rather vapid, thanks to its general lack of a plot. This week, however, we read another mathematically-themed book, If You Hoped Like a Frog by David M. Schwartz. This picture book revealed the sweeter side to math stories. Imaginative pictures made the book engaging, even though it did not contain any tangible plot. Schwartz's creative analogies made the concept of proportional thinking relatable for children. Kids can wrap their heads around ratios when they are likened to scenarios that occur in their daily lives.

Once kids have a basic understanding of number sense and numeration, and particularly of ratios and proportioning, they can begin to take on open ended mathematical puzzles. In class we took on the question of a Giant's Height. Armed with only a gigantic hand print belonging to a "giant", we were tasked with solving the mystery of how tall such a giant would stand. The best part of this inquiry is that there is no official "right answer". Nor was there any one way to go about solving it.
In my table group, I discovered that we all had different methods of trying to determine how tall the giant could be. I was most interested in using statistics to determine the height. I believed that if we compared the height of the giant's hand to the statistical average of a human male's hand, we could use the ratio to determine the overall height. My tablemates chose to solve the question differently, by actually measuring their own heights and comparing it to the hand of the giant. Once again, I am reminded that there are many ways of determining the answer to a problem. Even when it comes to proportions, your method of choice is only proportional to others'!