Elevator Magic

A little boy uses his imagination during some boring errands, and his mother lets him use subtraction to push the elevator buttons. I love the rhyming meter and the way the little boy uses his imagination. The math just sneaks in there. If your little one likes to "visualize" numerical concepts, this is a good tool -- using elevator buttons as a number line.

My 7 year-old, home schooled son loves elevators so much that we made one from a refrigerator box! He loves mechanics of all kinds, but was having difficulty with simple math concepts like addition and subtraction. I bought this book thinking it may have an elevator in it, but was surprised to see that Murphy related subtraction concepts to the story. Needless to say, my son loves this book, and reads it over and over. This book gave me the idea to make an elevator panel out of poster board to use while teaching math. Now, math is fun to learn, as well as fun to teach.

My four-year-old nephew is so into elevators that he asked for one for Christmas! Luckily, we found this book. The fact that it helps teach subtraction is a bonus. The main thing that our nephew likes about it is that it shows the elevator button panel on many pages (that's his favorite part of the elevator).

My five-year-old found this introduction to subtraction entertaining. It has value for parents, as well, because it reminds them that the opportunities to play at math with children are everywhere, even in elevators.