Sunday, March 31, 2013

A to Z Challenge

Yesterday I attended one of the CBW-LA (Children's Book Writers of Los Angeles) events where the guest speaker was Arlee Bird--creator of the A to Z Challenge.  

Now, I never really wanted to start a blog to just say I had a blog.  Listening to him speak I thought about what I could blog about and what would be meaningful.  I thought of my theme...math.  I am an aspiring children's book author who focuses on math in my books.  When going to writing conferences and talking to literary agents, I have found there is a need for math-related books.  Since my books target parents and teachers, I figured I should get my following now, so that when my books do come out I have a good audience for it.  And if my books never come out, I will have given the world a good resource for math activities and made my contribution to society (although, I am confident someone is bound to publish my books--I know persistence pays off).

I am still in the planning stages of which days I will do what, but I know that for this first month of April I will be doing the A to Z Challenge.  Each day (Monday through Saturday) I will pick an object or topic and throw ideas out of how it can have math activities for kids.

For example: Bed.  How many beds are in our house?  Measure the bed--what's the height, width, length?  Princess and the Pea stacked mattresses... how many could we stack until we hit the ceiling?  How many books would it take to cover the surface of the bed? How much time does it take to make the bed? ... Then I will ask all of you if you have any more ideas how you could use the object to teach math.

As time goes on we will have quite the resource for even the math phobic people out there to see how math is all around us and math can be extremely fun.
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