Math picture books teach geometry & measurement in a fun, engaging and memorable way. They can introduce new concepts, interest students and engage them in thinking about their learning. They encourage mathematical discussion. And of course it is always great to incorporate literacy into math instruction! There are so many fabulous books out there, but here are some of my favorites.
For my other book lists please see Math Picture Books: Place Value and Operations and Picture Books About Mathematicians.
Elementary Geometry Picture Books
The Greedy Triangle–
This book is such a fantastic one that I have written a whole post about all the ways you can use it. I have used it for teaching about shapes and attributes of polygons with students from kindergarten through middle school. The story can be understood with increasing levels of complexity.
If You Were a Polygon and If You Were a Quadrilateral—
These two books from the Math Fun series encourage students thinking about real world shapes. They would be a great lead in to making creative art applying student understanding of the attributes of polygons and quadrilaterals.
Spaghetti and Meatballs For All–
Another book by Marilyn Burns, this is a great way to introduce the relationship between area and perimeter. I read it while having students use square tile manipulatives to model the tables in the story.
Grandfather Tang’s Story–
Tangrams are a wonderful and underused manipulative for developing spatial reasoning skills. This is a perfect book for introducing them and modeling their use. Illustrative Mathematics has a free task with commentary, tangram template and character worksheet to go with this book. (listed for 1st grade, though could be used with any age.)
The Fly on the Ceiling
This is a book I use to introduce graphing points on the coordinate plane (5th grade standards.) It is based on a myth about René Descartes, the French mathematician who actually invented the Cartesian Coordinate System (though probably not in the way described in the book!)
Symmetry
For book suggestions on symmetry see my post Teaching Symmetry.
Measurement Picture Books
How Big Is a Foot?
This book demonstrates the difference between nonstandard and standard measurement units and why we need standard units! It’s a fun story that my students always enjoy. We usually follow it up by tracing, cutting out and comparing their shoes. (Bonus fine motor skill practice!) The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics has a free lesson for 3rd-5th grade to accompany this book.
Measuring Penny–
In this Rise and Shine book a girl measures her dog using both standard and nonstandard units. I have followed it up with homeschool students to measure and compare two dogs in the house! Stuffed animals would work well in the classroom, and it would be fun to incorporate graphing skills as you compare the different measurements.
Actual Size–
Kids love this book! It is so interesting because photographs of animals are shown true-to-size in relation to the page. As an example, the goby fish is shown entirely, but only the eye of the giant squid shows. As an Amazon reviewer mentions, many concepts could be taught with this book including size, scale, measurements, measuring length that is not a straight line, and proportions.
Millions to Measure.
This is a must have for teaching both customary and metric systems. It covers capacity, length and weight in both systems. The illustrations by Steven Kellogg are fantastic and the content is presented in such a fun way kids will read it over and over again, then use it as a reference.
Want book suggestions for telling time and elapsed time? See my post Teaching Elapsed Time.
I hope you found these suggestions for geometry & measurement math picture books helpful. If you have other suggestions please add them in the comments!
