The Enormous Turnip a fairy tale of a giant turnip

POSTED BY DANMEINA RODRIGUEZ

Title: The Enormous Turnip

Author: Alexei Tolstoy

Illustrator: Georgien Overwater

Common Core Standards Addressed:

CCSS. Mathpractice.1.MD.A.1 Express the length of an object as a whole number of length units, by laying multiple copies of a shorter object (the length unit) end to end; understand that the length measurement of an object is the number of same-size length units that span it with no gaps or overlaps. 

Summary: This book is about a wonderful story, in which a grandfather plants a turnip seed, which grows so large that he cannot pull it up himself and He asks the grandmother for help, and they together still cannot pull it up. Successively a boy, girl, dog and cat are recruited to helping pull it up, until they finally pull the turnip up together. The grandfather is very pleased that he invites everyone for delicious supper.

Rating: **** This is a wonderful book with delightful illustrations for first reading level. Also, it introduces how the length units become turn into a giant once.

Classroom: This book can be used to teach mathematical concepts in addition, patterns and sequences. This story demonstrates the understanding of the sequence of events in the story by properly adding one by one. The students can write one or more additional people to the story “the Enormous Turnip”. This exercise would help then to understand how adding unit to the event increase the number of length.