Shaping Up Summer (Math in Nature) Hardcover – Picture Book, March 18, 2014

Shapes, lines, parallel. Sun is a circle, no it's a star, moles mines in shapes. Spiders weave web of shapes. As you move along the story more animals and more shapes. Inside, outside, in front of, behind, between, or besides. Which word or phrase describe something? Animal hiding places and Nature notes. Moles dig what? When do the female skunks let their babies outside to find food? Beautifully illustrated, bright and colorful. The animals, plants, insects were colored so lively. Lessons and science mixed with math wonderfully mapped in this book. This book will make your child think and solve. Excellent! Won this book on Goodreads First Read Giveaway. Thank you, Darlene Cruz

Lovely book. Now I have a way of my kids enjoying nature and understanding Maths in the process.

Good way to introduce the idea of shapes in our real world. Would have been more effective if shapes were naturally occurring instead of just inserted into a natural scene.

Good for young kids learning about different shapes.Beautifully illustrated by Ashley Barron!

Lovely illustrations and great way to show kids how shapes occur in nature.

I really like this series from Lizann Flatt and Ashley Barron , it is an excellent purchase for children aged between 5-8 or so as the books are designed so they have layers of deepening knowledge accessible as they advance in their mathematical education.Shaping up for Summer is concerned with Shape, space and symmetry.Topics covered within the book include parallel lines, geometric shapes in both 2D and 3D, sorting, spatial positioning and directions, symmetry and lines of symmetry, map legends and more.All this is covered within real world mathematical application such as using map legends to discover hiding places for foxes and using natural science to explore mathematical concepts such as how spider weave webs, how suns rays travel in parallel lines etc.The animals discussed do come from largely a North American tradition and habitat as the author is Canadian but the information itself is applicable and accessible beyond the North American continent.Overall I like this series, it takes concepts that may ave been studied in a theoretical concept and shows children how maths is a real world living subject that happens by itself not just sums in books.

A book about numbers - with no page numbers! A colourful hardback book with 32 pages focusing on several aspects of maths in nature. I would estimate that the book is ideal for 8-9 yr olds although support may be needed for some of the concepts and vocabulary. At times the need to use rhymes and rhythm in the text leads to unclear questions('Would a newt not feel the need to hide/if it knew how to show off its symmetrical side?') and the images are usually clear, but not always - the double-page spread of puffins is most confusing - the question asks the reader to specify the position of the puffin relative to its burrow - there are four burrows, six specified positions and eight puffins. The text is clearly shown on the page and is always in a strongly contrasting colour, which is excellent, so often books with colourful pages have text which is not well defined, this book does not make that mistake. Overall, this is helpful as a way of reinforcing maths concepts, but no answers are provided (which would help some independent-minded youngsters) and some of the activities are fine for a 6 year old (identifying simple shapes) where others are for much older children.