Two Exponential Growth Activities: Literature and Math Connections
These exponential growth activities offer an excellent way to blend literature and math!
Gather the books One Grain of Rice: A Mathematical Folktale by Demi and The King’s Chessboard by David Birch. The activities below offer hands-on experiences with exponential growth to help children visualize the rapid expansion of doubling numbers. Your children will love bringing these folktales to life while practicing real-life calculations!

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One Grain of Rice Book for Kids
One Grain of Rice: A Mathematical Folktale by Demi is a beautifully illustrated story. It delivers a powerful moral and a fascinating math lesson. Set in India, the tale follows a raja who stores his people’s rice for times of famine. But when a famine finally arrives, he hoards the rice, leaving the villagers to starve. However, a clever young girl devises a plan that starts with a single grain of rice, doubling each day. Soon, her small request grows into a mountain of rice that ultimately feeds everyone. The raja is humbled and inspired to live justly.
One Grain of Rice Exponential Growth Activities
After reading One Grain of Rice, engage your child in exponential growth activities that bring the story’s concept of doubling to life.
- Chart the Growth: Begin by charting the number of grains of rice the raja gives away each day, starting with one grain and doubling it each day. Encourage your child to track both the daily amount and the cumulative total. A calculator can be helpful as the numbers grow quickly!
- Calculate Real-World Quantities: Once you’ve charted several days, choose a few specific days to calculate how many cups of rice that day’s amount would equal.
- For an Extra Challenge: Convert the approximate weight of the rice then estimate how many people it could feed.
The King’s Chessboard Book for Kids
Another fun way to explore exponential growth activities is by reading The King’s Chessboard by David Birch. This engaging story tells of a wise man who asks the king for a single grain of rice in return for his service. The only catch is that he wants the rice doubled daily across a chessboard’s 64 squares. The king, thinking it a small price, agrees—only to discover that doubling quickly becomes an enormous commitment.
The King’s Chessboard Exponential Growth Activities
After reading the book, these match activities will deepen your child’s understanding of exponential growth.
- Activity Idea: Have your child create a chart or draw a chessboard with 64 squares. Beginning with one grain of rice on the first square, double the amount for each subsequent square. Encourage them to record the number of grains at intervals (like every five squares) to see the numbers escalate quickly!
- Real-World Connections: Just as with One Grain of Rice, take a few points along the chessboard and convert those amounts into cups or even pounds of rice. Discuss what it would take to meet this request in real life.
These hands-on approaches make math tangible and help children understand exponential growth through memorable stories. They’ll get a sense of just how quickly doubling adds up—and have fun with the computation along the way!
Learn Through Living Math
These activities are examples of living math. Living math is a teaching approach that connects mathematical concepts to real-life situations, stories, and hands-on activities, making math meaningful and engaging. By integrating math with daily experiences, literature, and practical applications, living math encourages children to see math as a relevant and enjoyable part of their lives.
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Loving Living Math$20.00
I can teach you how to incorporate more living math into your homeschool lesson plans! The Loving Living Math book and Homeschooling with Living Math video class offer a treasure trove of ideas for integrating math with literature, hands-on activities, and daily life. With these resources, you’ll discover how to make math a lively, engaging subject that connects with your children’s everyday experiences and fuels their natural curiosity!
I love this book! It is so amazing how the numbers increase so quickly!
Hilary
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