How Big is a Million?

Title: How Big is a Million?

Author: Anna Milbourne 

Illustrator: Serena Riglietti

Recommended Grade Level: Prekindergarten- 3rd grade

NCTM Content Standard: Number and Operations

Summary: This is a story about a small penguin named Pipkin who decides to go on a quest to find a million of something.  This proves to be harder than he imagined! First he finds ten fish, then he meets 100 penguins,  and he even sees 1,000 snowflakes. Eventually, he gives up and goes home. When he gets there, his mother has a surprise for him -she helps him find out how big a million really is! At the end of the book, there is a huge poster that folds out and shows what a million stars looks like!

Uses/Activities: This book is great for helping young children conceptualize very large numbers, and helping them to understand how numbers relate to one another. It is also a good way to show how simply adding a "zero" to the end of a number can change the value of the number dramatically. Depending on the age of the students, there are many different activities you do using this book.  For younger kids, you could have them draw their own version of the story, using a much smaller number as the ultimate goal (like 100, instead of 1 million).  For older kids, you could have them make estimates using the poster at the end.  For instance, the poster folds out into 24 squares; the teacher could ask each student to guess how many stars there are in each separate square and then solve for the correct answer. Kids of all ages will be in awe of what a million stars actually looks like!