Storybook Guide Based on Joyce Sidman’s “Round”

In this beautifully illustrated book, a little girl joyfully describes her love for roundness. She sees round things everywhere. She marvels at many different kinds of roundness, including curves and circles that are near and far, from the sun to blueberries on a bush. She observes that seeds may start out round but then transform into other shapes. She notices that some round objects can roll and spin. At the end, the girl makes a circle of friends, leaving no one out.

MATH WORDS
tiny, no one left out, inside

OTHER WORDS
hatch, swell, budding, ripening, stretching, spinning, smoothness, splats, ripples

As the girl proclaims her love of roundness, your child can learn major features of shapes:

• Some round objects, like oranges and blueberries, have curves that you can reach around—they are three dimensional.
• Some round objects, like the circles on a tree trunk, are flat—they are two-dimensional.
• Some round objects, like a ball, are spheres; other round objects, like many eggs, have an oval shape.
• Some shapes change over time, like water circles that become larger and eventually disappear.