Monster Music Factory

Cute monsters learn about number as they pick musical instruments for a concert.

Monster Music Factory is one of three interactive storybooks, along with Monster Birthday Surprise, and Monster Frog Pond, brought to you by Professor Ginsboo's Magical Math Production Company. Based on a decade of research at Teachers College, Columbia University, the interactive storybooks are a playful approach to early math learning. Monster Music Factory is designed to help young children, roughly ages 4 to 6 years, learn about number, specifically, different methods for determining the number of objects in a collection.

Monster Music Factory is the story of how three charming monsters-Oona, Tigga, and Marluk-are asked by another character, Zoller, to send musical instruments to the famous band, the Whirling Wailers, who are about to give a concert. The monsters are thrilled by the chance to help the Whirling Wailers, their favorite band. The monsters' task is to determine the number of the musical instruments that emerge from a chute in the Music Factory and then select the written numeral that shows the correct number. Once the child succeeds at doing this, a box with the correct numeral appears and the instruments pop into the box, which is then taken away to be sent to the Whirling Wailers.

The first set of instruments are tambourines. Oona says there are three, but she is wrong. Tigga helps her to get the right answer-four-by counting carefully, one by one. Next, Oona (and the child) should press the 4 on the machine, which causes a box with 4 written on it to pop up and receive the instruments for shipping to the band. After this, the child is shown several different numbers of tambourines and can practice counting them, checking, and selecting the correct written numeral.

Trumpets are next on the list. But a complication arises! The trumpets come out in a pile so messy that it is hard to see how many there are. What to do? Tigga shows how to count the trumpets by pushing aside one at a time until they are all counted. After that, more trumpets emerge and the child has the chance to drag and count one by one.

After the trumpets are all boxed and sent off, kazoos are next on the list. They do something new: as they emerge from the chute, they stay on the screen for only a second or two before descending into a box. To determine the number, you have to see it; you can't count. Psychologists call this "subitizing," seeing quickly ("subito" in Italian). This is hard to do. Young children might learn to see 3 or 4 and maybe even 5. Adults can subitize up about 7 or even 8 or 9. The child is given several opportunities to learn to subitize flying kazoos.

Next come ukuleles, the final instrument. There are more of them than the other instruments. But when they come out of the chute, they arrange themselves in a row of 5 and then another row beneath that. So if the number is 7, the child will see the row of 5 on top, and then a row of two just below on the left, like this:

X X X X X

X X

To solve the problem, the child can count, "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and now 6, 7. There are 7 altogether." After doing this, the child is likely to see that a simpler method is possible. Just start with 5 and count on from there: "5, and now 6, 7. There are 7 altogether." In this strategy, the row of 5, which the child can learn to see, is a kind of foundation for the numbers 6 through 10. Another way of looking at it is that the child begins with 5 and then adds on some more to get the result.

After the child loads the boxes, in number order onto a truck, everyone goes to a concert given by the Whirling Wailers, who sing some wonderful original music by Chris Cerf.

The other two books in the series, Monster Birthday Surprise, and Monster Frog Pond, also help the child to learn basic ideas about number and strategies for solving simple, everyday life math problems.