Pigeon Math Book Review and Subtraction Activity

Combine math, reading, and humor and you got Asia Citro’s Pigeon Math. Pigeon Math is about a pigeon that is trying to tell a story but a series of humorous events keeps happening causing it to restart the story. Will the pigeon ever finish its story?

Book Review

What makes this counting book different is that it’s not just an addition and subtraction counting book with illustrative pictures. There’s an interesting and funny narrative that’s also taking place that will keep students engaged.

This book is a great read aloud for kindergarten and first grade. It’s educational enough to use as a mentor text to go along with a math lesson, but fun enough to use as a read aloud for enjoyment.

Subtraction Math Activity

Here’s a printable and digital math activity you can use after reading this book!

How to Play

First, students come up with a list of reasons why a pigeon would fly away. Record what they say on the recording sheet. Next, use their reasons to construct word problems.

Last, students act out the word problems and write an equation.

There’s a digital version to this same printable activity. You can assign it to your students using Google Classrooms.

Here are some more digital games.

Read this article to learn how I used Boom Cards in my classroom.

Here’s the printable version of this activity:

Click here for the digital activity

What other addition and subtraction math books do you recommend? Let me know in the comments’ section below.

Click here for more subtraction activities!

Happy Teaching!

Tee