Read the cropped-by-the-scanner version of Counting on Frank by Rod Clement (Gareth Stevens Publishing, 1991). (Warning: Due to the nature of this file, it is quite large – just shy of 25 MB.)
In addition to posting your impressions of the book, each of you will post here a true-to-life example which might be added to the text. Although many of the examples in the text are straightforward, proportional thinking exercises, your example should demonstrate an understanding of volume. (For help, see the example below, pages 2-3 of the text, or the peas or jelly bean example.) Explain how you came up with what you did, and (this next part is essential) how you know your example is reasonable.
PLEASE!!! Type the codes <b><i> before your example and </b></i> at the end of your example. This will make the text appear bold and italicized (like in my example below). Do NOT include these codes around the explanation portion of your post. Thanks!!!
Filed under: Children's Literature | Tagged: Counting on Frank, proportional thinking, volume
My dad likes to drink Diet Mountain Dew. A LOT. Sometimes he forgets to put his empty cans in the recycle box. If he made a habit out of doing that, 141 empty soda cans would fit in our trashcan. If he squashed them first, he wouldn’t fill it up until just before my next birthday!
Of course, that’d never happen. I’ve had a cold recently, so the trashcan is full of Kleenex. That’s makes me wonder…
OK, I’ll admit it: I was in a hurry, so I estimated my oddly-shaped trashcan to be rectangular. I calculated the volume to be approximately 3131 cubic inches. I then roughly estimated the volume of a 12-oz can of pop to be (4.5 x 1.25 x 1.25 x pi). I divided the trashcan’s volume by the volume of one can to determine that 141 would fit – of course, this is assuming no leftover space or gaps, which would obviously not be true. I estimated a squished can to have a height of 3/8-inches and my “dad’s” drinking habit to be a modest six cans per day. At that rate, it would take approximately nine months (or, before a year) to fill the trashcan (with cans only).
Counting on Frank presented some interesting facts that most kids would not think about otherwise. A pen’s ink lasting 2,300 yards was a cool fact. It would take the length of 23 football fields for a pen to run out of ink! I thought of a true to life example that could be added to the book:
My grandma cooks a lot for the family. She uses tons of butter in her recipes. She always has a few sticks of butter in her fridge. If grandma wanted to completely stock her fridge with butter she would need 3,724 sticks of butter!
If you lined up the sticks of butter it would reach a little over a quarter of a mile!!
I measured the inside of grandmas refrigerator to find the volume. I took out the crispers for more room. The dimensions were 103cm x 71cm x 55cm for the volume of 402,215cm cubed. I measured one of her sticks of butter to be 12cm x 3cm x 3cm for a volume of 108cm cubed. I divided the refrigerators volume by the stick of butter volume and realized it would take roughly 3,724 sticks of butter to fill up grandmas refrigerator.
This was a very cute and interesting book. I think this book would help children to think about volume and its realativity to every day life, and help them to realize math isnt just for the classroom. For example Frank winning the trip to Hawaii because he was able to figure out how many jelly beans were in the jar.
My mom loves to make cakes both for others and our family. She is always complaining that there just isnt enough room in our refrigerator since it is a side by side type. I figured If my mom took all the drawers and shelves out she could fit 59 of her normal sized cakes in our refrigerator.
I measured our refrigerator without the shelves to be 16in.x 16in.x 54in. which gives it a volume of 13,824in. I measured my mom’s cake pan to be 1.5in x 14in. x 11in. which gives it a volume of 231in. I then took the volume of the refrigerator and divided it by the volume of the pan, which told me that my mom could fit 59 whole cake pans stacked on top of each other before it was filled.
That was very interesting for a boy of that age to think of all the things that can relate to different things with their volume and deminsions. This would be a good book to use when your students want to be complicated and say “When will we every use this math?” You could have them read this book and show you could win a trip to Hawaii.
My Niece likes cheeze-itz and usually eats atleast 20 a day. So I wonder it she eats 20 a day how many would fit into a box and how many boxes would she eat in a year. My Box is 6 1/2 IN. X 2 1/2 IN. X 9 IN. and my cracker is 1in. X 1in. X 1/8 IN.
I figured it up that my volume of my box is 146.25 inches and the volume of my cracker is .125 in. then I divided them and got 1170 crackers in a box and if she eats 20 a day I multiplyed 20 by 365 because thats how many days are in a year. And I got right around 6 boxes a year which means around every 2 months my sister has to by a box of cheese-itz.
I liked this story about Frank and his brain! It was very intertaining to know that a kid could think of all these different things and find their volume. I would love to use this story in my classroom when my students get to the point where they are annoyed at the subject and ask me when they are ever going to use this in real life.
I eat Wheat Thins on a reagular basis and thought it would be interesting to know how many boxes i bought in one year. I usually eat about 35 of the snack crackers a day. My box is 13.5cm X 5.5cm X 19.5cm and my snack cracker is 3cm X .1cm X 3.5cm.
The volume of my box is 1447.875cm. The volume of my snack cracker is 1.05cm. I divided 1447.875 by 1.05 and got that 1379 snack crackers fit into one box. If i eat 35 a day i would multiple that by 365(how many days in a year) to get 12775, which is how many crackers i eat in one year. So then i divided 12775 and 1379, which is how many crackers i eat in one year by how many fit into one box. That equaled 9.2. So I approsimately buy 9 boxes of Wheat Thins in one year.
That was a pretty good story. That kid has alot of time on his hands to figure up all that stuff, but what he found was interesting. He must be pretty smart to figure some of that stuff up.
I like to drink chocolate milk at school. The volume of the milk in the carton is 15 cubic inches. (3×2x2.5). SO if I drink a carton a day, 365×236ml=86,140ml a year.
I wish I could read the whole book about Frank. This book make me wonder if some people really think like Frank did. This book would be entertaining for all age groups. The candy jar, peas, and the whale were my favorite parts of the story. The real life example that came to mind was not real hard for me to come up with, it all revolves around the horrific week long chore in July called, “Putting-up-corn.”
Every year since I don’t know when my father-in-law plants row, after row, after row of sweet corn. (In fact, its really the only corn I will eat) After the corn is ready to be picked we all go down in the garden, (which is usually wet, muddy, and hot with knats and mosquitos everywhere), we pick the corn and shuck it. Next, we carry it up to the house where we wash it and then boil it for 8-10 minutes. We then soak it in cold water until its cool, get out our cutters, and then start cutting the corn off the cob. From here we go into the next stage. We put the corn into baggies, and throw the bags into the freezer. This takes about a week, why so long? Dad usually plants about 8 various size rows. So the question that I arrive at is how many bags of corn will fill up our 15 cubic foot chest freezer???
We bagged about 150 quart size bags full of corn last summer. So I am kind of guessing with this. Each bag contains 2 1/2 to 3 cups of fresh cut corn. The freezer is 121 cm. cubed X 70 cm. cubed X 87 cm. cubed making this approximately equally 736,890 cm.cubed. The baggie is 18 cm. X 5 cm. X 23 cm aproximately equally 2070 cm. cubed. After finding this information I divided the two and came up with, 355.98, I rounded to the nearest whole number and…..
IT WILL TAKE AROUND 356 BAGS TO FILL OUR FREEZER!!!!!!
This was a very cute book. The little boy was very inquisitive. He reminded me of the boy on Jerry Mcguire that randomly told the guy the average head weighs about 8 pounds….
My son will be 6 months on monday and he LOVES to eat. Every time I go to the store I stock up on his baby food. It would take 172 packages (344 containers) to fully stock the 6 cabinets in my kitchen. This would last him about ten months at the rate he eats it now.
Each of the food containers measure 3in x 2.5in x 1.5in (112.5 cubic inches), each cabinet measures 36in x 18in x 10in (6480 cubic inches). I divided the volume of the cabinet by the volume of the food containers and got 57 since i have 6 cabinets I could hold 345 containers. The containers come in packages of 2 so i would round down to 344 and divide by 2 (amount in each package) and that equals 172 packages.