This book is TOO FUN! The illustrations alone are priceless. It’s a Halloween twist on the traditional The 12 Days of Christmas song.

I always like to read the story first without too many interruptions. Although, be sure to have the students see if they can find the dog on each of the pages! They love that.

Then we get into the math. With my younger students, we use Unifix cubes to determine the total number of gifts on day 12 (or any other day depending on the ability of the group). We then group the cubes into sticks of tens and then the leftover ones.

With the older students, I have them work with a partner to figure out the cumulative total of gifts for all 12 days. They need to figure out how to represent the gifts and organize their work.

So what happened to day 13? You’ll have to read the book to find out!