The Books on the Shelf

A Read Aloud Math Book




This is a math book meant to be read aloud to and discussed with groups of 2-, 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds, prereaders.

Colors, days of the week, and NUMBERS are its vocabulary. Its purpose is to encourage counting and discussion.

The reader might paste/copy the text on the back of an enlargement of the picture so that the reader sees the words and answers as the listener sees the pictures. The template from which one might make all illustrations is LINKED and shown here.

The entire book as a Word® document is LINKED HERE.




Please enjoy The Books on the Shelf.


Once upon a time, some books sat on a shelf in your library.







How many books are red? (1)

How many books are blue? (2)

How many books are green? (0)

How many books do you see on the shelf? (4)


While the big book was reading to the little books, a hand reached over and added a book to the shelf.






What color is the new book? (yellow)

How many blue books are there? (2)

How many orange books are there? (0)

How many yellow books are there? (1)

How many white books are there? (1)

How many books are on the shelf? (5)


One morning when the books woke up, they found 2 new books on the shelf.

What color are the 2 new books? (blue)

How many blue books are there? (4)




On Saturday morning a hand reached up to the shelf and took the white book away.






All the other books missed the white book and wondered where it was.

How many books missed the white book? (6)




On Sunday the books wondered where the white book was.

On Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday, they talked about and wondered where the white book was.

Where do you think the white book was?

On Thursday, they started to worry about the white book.

But, on Friday the white book came back to the shelf!


On Friday the white book came back but ... it didn't have a white cover any more!

What color was its cover now? (purple)

The purple book told all the other books about all the children that it had read its stories to and what a wonderful time the purple book had had. All the other books also loved the purple book's stories. It was good that the pruple book's stories were read to the children, but it was nice to have the purple book back in its place on the shelf. All the books sat happily on the shelf.

How many books sat happily on the shelf? (7)


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