Book of the Week: How Big is a Million?

Our book of the week is How Big is a Million? There is a good reason I chose this one for our Dinosaur Week: it gives kids a better grasp of what it means to say that something happened millions of year ago. You can think of it like math for Dinosaur Week.

My son and I had a great time reading this cute book. It is the darling story of a penguin named Pipkin who goes on an adventure to find his million. First he finds ten fish. Then one hundred penguins. Then a thousand snow flakes. Discouraged, he comes home to his loving mother who shows him a million stars in the night sky. The book comes with a poster that measures 3 ft. x 4 1/2 ft. It literally has one million tiny dots on it that look like stars.

This is one tiny corner of the poster. Look at all those stars!

Sometimes it's really hard for kids to grasp the idea of what big numbers mean. Having something visual for them to count and compare makes this abstract idea mush more understandable. Overall, two thumbs up for How Big is a Million? for teaching math concepts with a really sweet story.

Pipkin on his adventure looking for his million.