One Is a Snail, Ten Is a Crab: A Counting by Feet Book

Product Information

This sequence begins with a focus on developing students’ counting skills to work with numbers beyond 10, then continues on to build early place value understanding as students investigate teen numbers. The key understanding of unitising is introduced as students use a group of 10 and some more ones to represent numbers 11 to 19. Prior to this lesson you can have created copymasters of your own children’s drawings of the “units” (snail, person, dog, insect, crab) by asking someone to draw one of each and then reproducing them on a photocopier to create sheets of units or you can use the copymaster of clip art “units” or you can have each child do their own drawings for the activity. After reading the book explain to students that they (or their pair) will each get to pull a number from the bag and make that number in 2 ways using the counting feet from the story.

The numbers are printed in a font size that is significantly larger than the text, cueing the reader to their importance. The use of multiple examples for the larger numbers also provides multiple avenues to understand how smaller groups are combined to form one larger group. Brief Book Summary: This book is entirely about counting, and uses unique and creative ways of showing children how to do so. The book begins by showing the reader that a snail has one foot, so they begin there at one. Then it continues that two is a person because a person has two feet. Three is a person and a snail. Four is a dog because they have four legs. Five is a dog and a snail. Six is an insect. Seven is an insect and a snail. Eight is a spider. Nine is a spider and a snail. Ten is a crab. The book then continues to count by ten’s up to one hundred using various things to count with for instance, “twenty is two crabs”, and “thirty is three crabs or ten people and a crab.” This task continues to use the book One is a Snail, Ten is a Crab. It introduces students to the patterns of our place-value system and the significance of 10. The key understanding of unitising is introduced by asking students to represent teen numbers using one crab, which is the same as using 1 ten. In doing so, students move from using 10 ones to 1 ten. have an understanding of the composition of numbers; for exampl, 7 can be made by combining 1 and 6.The element of humor makes the learning fun and introduces math in a context that is meant to be silly. With one hundred snails finishing the story the original character is brought full circle and the connection between one and one hundred firmly established. The concept of using small skills to create a foundation for larger skills is done effectively in this book, using familiar animals and human attributes to allow the reader to see the math and math tools in any setting. Using animals and people as the elements to count from one to one hundred, this book uses small numbers to first introduce the concept and then through repetition and building on that concept teaches how to reach much larger numbers. In relying upon the foundation of one through ten, with each number being represented by a cute creature, the reader is taught how to build math skills in a fun, inviting format. The mathematical focus of the story and the use of everyday items that students recognize can be recreated in the classroom using a variety of tools. Any manipulative from food to marbles can be combined from smaller sets to larger sets, modeling the process within the book.

This task uses the book One is a Snail, Ten is a Crab to explore numbers up to 20. Students represent numbers using the number of legs on animals in the book and look at how one number can be represented in multiple ways. Students also explore the efficiency of different representations. Lesson 2: One Crab + Some More This ingenious counting book is all about feet. Not the kind with inches. The kind with toes, or paws, or claws. “1 is a snail. 2 is a person. 3 is a person and a snail.” The four-footed dog plus a snail equals five. The eight –footed spider plus a snail equals nine. Ten? Why, ten is a crab! And that means 20 is two crabs. Forty is four crabs, or ten dogs or…you get the picture. And so will kids. No doubt they’ll be eagerly creating their own pedimentary equations in no time.”This is a really clever book which has strong cross curricular links with numeracy. The author is using feet/footprints as a counting tool. This is a great book which can be used across all primary year groups. The author carries on until 10 like this and then moves on to counting up to 100 (100 is ten crabs!) Lots of activities can stem from this book and can span a whole range of maths topics from basic counting to addition to algebra. E.g Are there any other ways we could make 100? (ie. 9 crabs, 1 dog and 6 snails) Summary: This is a creative book on counting. Sayre uses animals’ legs to teach children to count while also teaching children how many legs different animals have. A perfect cross curricular book with strong links to numeracy. This story is all about counting with feet! "One is a snail, two is a person, three is a snail and a person, four is a dog, five is a dog and a snail!" By using pictures as an effective tool for counting in arrays, children can see the link to counting in multiples of 10 and can even use the pictures to help them come up with their own sums. I like the way the story builds up slowly with illustrations. This allows children, especially those who are mathematically weak, use visuals to count and make connections with number sums. Because this book is not littered with numbers and calculations it proves more engaging to children.