Ant receives a special invitation to dinner with Lion. Other animals attend the dinner, but their manners are horrible. When it is time to eat the birthday cake, the animals all take one-half of the birthday cake. When the cake reaches Ant, there is barely a crumb left for her to share with the Lion. She decides to bake another cake for the Lion. Not wanting to be outdone, the other animals decide to bake as well, with Hippo needing to bake 256 peanut butter cupcakes. The book is a good example of demonstrating to students the concept of halving and doubling.

Geometric progressions are explored in this resource as a vain king insists that a wise man accept a reward for his service. The man reluctantly requests a daily payment of rice that is to be doubled for each square of the chessboard. The unwitting monarch grants the request and subsequently drains the royal granaries of its rice supply. The watercolour illustrations amplify the king's anguish as he realizes the folly of his decision and his eventual concession that pride can make a fool of oneself. This resource parallels the mathematical premise of Demi's One Grain of Rice: A Mathematical Folktale and McKibbon's The Token Gift.

Set in the palace of a powerful Chinese warlord, Chuan's father is entrusted with counting the warlord's treasures. Father becomes increasingly worried when he is unable to accurately count the valuable objects and exotic spices. As accusations of thievery arise, Father realizes the need for a different counting method. Using jade beads, Chuan devises a rudimentary abacus that provides an efficient and accurate account. A historical note that traces the invention of the abacus and instructions for creating an abacus are included.
A study guide is available at www.pelicanpub.com/SGuides/Beads_guide.pdf. In addition to mathematics, there are suggested activities to support other subject areas.

A group of students set out to improve their local park by picking up garbage. In the process, they find many aluminum cans and decide to recycle them, using the money to buy flowers for the park. When the garbage collector accidentally picks up the bags of cans, the students decide to begin a school-wide recycling project. Together, they raise awareness for the project among the student body. As the cans start to come in, the organizers count and keep track of the total, placing the cans into bags of 10, 100 and 1,000. After surpassing their goal of 5,000 cans, the students celebrate Earth Day by planting flowers in the park. Additional suggestions for exploring place value are included at the end of the story.

Mr. and Mrs. Comfort have arranged eight tables and 32 chairs to seat their invited relatives at the family reunion. Pandemonium erupts as each new group of guests suggests its own ideas for seating and subsequently alters the table arrangements. As the dining room is reconfigured into tables for six, eight and twelve people, the guests continue to dispute over inadequate seating and the placement of silverware. Eventually, the tables are rearranged in Mrs. Comfort's original seating plan. An appended section provides an explanation of the story's mathematical concepts and suggestions for extending the study of measurement.