The Cockatoos’ is a story about Professor Dupont, a man so wrapped up in routines that he overlooks how some of his quirks may be perceived as annoying!

This book offers several opportunities to explore mathematical language with early years’ pupils.

As Professor Dupont searches for his ‘Feathered Friends’ classes can explore positional language such as ‘the cockatoos are ‘above’ his head.’ ‘The cockatoos are sat ‘on top’ of the toilet.’

As he searches for his cockatoos there are ample opportunities to count as a class. ‘How many cockatoos can you find in this picture?’ ‘How many more are there?’

Another activity which can stem from this story is for the class to hide their own cockatoos and think about how they can direct their classmates to try and find them. ‘Go left three steps,’ ‘Turn around and go back.’ By photographing or drawing areas of the classroom, school or playground the children can take turns hiding the cockatoo and use their ‘map’ to help guide each other to its location.

This type of lesson can lead onto basic programming games on the computer such as Scratch.  https://scratch.mit.edu/