The Best Vacation Ever

Title: The Best Vacation Ever
Author: Stuart J. Murphy
Illustrator: Nadine Bernard Westcott
Recommended Grade Level: 2-3 grade
Common Core Mathematics Standard Addressed: Measurement and Data (represent and interpret data)
Summary: The Best Vacation Ever is a story about a family who is always busy and in need of a vacation. So, the young girl in the story goes to each member of the family asking them a series of very important questions to see where everyone would like to go. She asks questions such as "do you want a hot or cold place, relaxing or fun?" and so on. She makes a chart for each question along with each family members answer. At the end of her questionnaire she tally's the answers to find out where their best vacation will be.
Rating:****
Classroom Ideas: This book is great as an introductory lesson on collecting data. It gives children an idea of how important and usefull collecting data can be in the real world. An activity that can go along with this book can be by having students surveying each other to find out things about one another. This can be used at the begining of the year as a way to get to know everyone and to create a class graph to find out how many kids have certain things in common, such as food, sports and favorite subject.