Caps For Sale

Caps For Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina is a book which offers a lot of both math and literacy activities. It is also humorous, which makes it more appealing to children of all ages. The story is about a peddler who is trying to sell caps to make money so he can eat lunch. When no one wants to buy his caps, he sits down under a tree and decides to take a nap (with the caps still on his head). Later, when he wakes up, he realizes that all of his caps have been stolen by monkeys in the tree. The monkeys refuse to give the peddler his hats back, so the peddler throws his own hat on the ground in frustration. When the monkeys see this, they decide to do the same! The peddler then collects all of his hats back and continues on his way.

This book provides math connections mainly for the primary grades K-3. For very young children, they can practice identifying colors and counting the numbers of caps in each color and in all. This could also lead to a study in adding up parts of the whole. (Example: 4 gray caps + 4 brown caps + 4 blue caps + 4 red caps=16 caps total) A problem like this could be a good jumping point for problem solving activities where students are able to get creative. What if the peddler sold 2 gray caps, 0 brown caps, 1 blue cap, and 4 red caps? How many caps does he have left? Depending on the students in the class, the students could even act out problems by having one student be the peddler and everyone else in the class coming to purchase hats. If students are able to see a real-life dramatization of what the problem is asking, they will build visualization skills to help them on other problems.

Another connection this book makes is money. Each cap in the book is 50 cents, so this provides a whole host of curricular connections. Students could use coins to show different ways to make 50 cents. Or, they could pretend to buy a particular number of hats and have to determine how much 2, 3, 4, or more hats would cost all together. (Repeated addition serves as a good introduction to multiplication!)

Visit the Slobodkina Foundation at http://www.slobodkina.com/Childrens%20Library_Caps%20for%20Sale.htm for more information about the book as well as free downloadable activity pages.

"My experiences learning math content were never positive ones. I remember drills and tons of worksheets. If I had learned with a story as the content, it would have been much better."

-Allie, pre-service teacher