Pistes d'exploration

Look around the classroom. Can you see numbers hiding in unexpected places? Share your discoveries with a friend. 

Look closely at the illustrations. What tools do you think the artist used? Do you think the drawings are simple or complicated? Which one is your favourite?

Choose a number and create an illustration representing that quantity. Write a descriptive sentence to go along with your drawing.

Read along and practise saying the numbers and sentences. Count and name objects in the illustrations.

Play I Spy with a partner, using shapes, colours and the numbers 1-10. For example, “I spy, with my little eye, four red objects.”

Choose a number from 1 to 10. Make a drawing for that number and write a descriptive sentence.

Mots-clés

Picture book , Poetry , counting , figurative language , mathematics , numbers

Commentaire descriptif

Thought-provoking concepts portray numbers from zero to ten, in this unusual counting book. “6 for musketeers alongside their reflection” is illustrated by three musketeers and their reflections in a pond of lily pads. In many images, young readers may count out objects; other spreads focus on the shape of the featured number: “8 for sand counting out the hours” depicts a giant 8-shaped hourglass, in which two boys are playing. The themes can be funny, enigmatic and even surreal—encouraging children to make their own connections between phrase, image, and number: “4 for a chair hanging by its legs,” “5 for secret creatures in a glove.” The illustrations are charming and sophisticated, in soft hues and strong pencil-mark effects. In one image, pale blue washes over textured paper, as two distant children watch a balloon float toward the reader: “9 for a balloon upon a breeze”. All the numbers appear in the final spread, crossed out on the painted blackboard of a classroom wall. Distracted from her studies, a student gazes at dragonflies, their flight paths tracing the number 10. This is a counting book that also addresses a whole lot more.