Lemonade for Sale by Stuart Murphy - Blog Post #3

1. Lemonade for Sale by Stuart J. Murphy features the story of Elm Street’s kids, Mathew, Meg, Danny, Sherry and their pet, Peter, and their brilliant solution to earn the needed money to cover for the fixes of their dwindling clubhouse’s repairing. They figure that if they sell 30 to 40 lemonade cups for $0.25 each during a hot summer days they will earn sufficient money.

The kids work together to keep track of the lemonade they sell each day for an entire week using a bar graph. On Monday they sold 30 cups. On Tuesday they sold 40 cups. On Wednesday they sold 56 cups of lemonade. However, on Thursday, after begging and Peter’s squawking of “Lemonade for Sale!”, they only sold 24 cups. As they begin to worry that something might be wrong with the lemonades they put so much hard work into, they notice that a new neighbor, Jed, was juggling down the street, taking everybody's attention away from the lemonades and into Jed. The kids finally decide to work together on Friday; Jed juggled next to the lemonade stand while the rest of the children sold lemonade. They sold over 100 lemonades making it hard to keep track on a graph, and they made even more money than they originally planned which was therefore enough to repair their clubhouse, of which Jed was now a part of.

2. Lemonade for Sale creatively shows easy and realistic ways of graphing obtained results in a real life and very common situation. The kids keep track of their lemonade sales in a bar graph. On the first day, the amount of cups sold was 30. On the following two days, the amount of lemonade cups sold increased; by 10 cups on the second day and 16 cups on the third day. Thus far the sales were higher by day. On the fourth day, the amount sold dropped by 26, with only 24 lemonade cups sold, meaning that the sales lowered that day to even less than the cups sold on the first day. And on the last day, the sales increased to the maximum. Therefore, the graph had ups and downs, which represented the increases and decreases. The book also vaguely touches on estimating numbers, such as when graphing number 56, Sheri chooses to estimate that it will be somewhere near the middle of number 50s and 60s, inclining a little more towards 60. 

Since the amount of cups sold hugely varied each day, there is not a constant expression that represents the pattern.

3. Literature is an effective way to teach/ learn a mathematical concept as it allows readers to identify and understand the importance of the meaning and usage of mathematical concepts in real life. Particularly in children’s books, the use of visual creativity to complement the words make it seem less intimidating to children, easier to relate to, more meaningful and at the same time it helps them experience and understand math in different ways. (i.e. through drawings, pictures, words and graphs).