Last year right before Halloween, I read a wonderful book to a class of kindergartners. The book was Ten Timid Ghosts by Jennifer O’Connell. The students drew haunted houses and a few trees. As I read the story, they used ten bean counters to show where each ghost was during the story. At any given time each ghost was either in the house or in the woods. They could see lots of number sentences as the story progressed.

This year I liked the idea of making a haunted house with ten window frames and ten sections for the trees in the woods. That way each of the ten ghosts could have a specific place to be throughout the story. I made the ten frames vertical to make odd and even amounts easier to see. There seems to be some ghostly figures flying around the tree branches, too.

You are welcome to use this haunted house as you add and subtract ghosts from the house and the woods. You’ll need some ghosts, too. Dry great northern beans are white and make great ghosts. If you like, you can add eyes and a mouth to the ghostly beans with a marker.

For those who would rather use less printer ink, I’ve made a similar picture that can be colored after it is printed:

You may also want to look at another activity that uses this same book. Sara Gast’s power point was especially made for kids with autism, but other children would enjoy it as well. You can use her activity to reinforce the concept of ordinal numbers, too.

Young children everywhere are sure to enjoy this fun book as they learn to count and to add and subtract.

Now I’ll write a little bit about the number 913.

If you’ve read my last few posts, you may have noticed that 910, 911, and 912 can each be represented in BASE 26 using their base ten digits in a different order. That pattern continues for 913. In fact, it is true for 914 – 919, as well. However, 913 is even more special because not only is it 193 in BASE 26, it is also 391 in BASE 16. Thank you, OEIS.org for that fun fact.

9 – 1 + 3 = 11, so 913 is divisible by eleven.

• 913 is a composite number.
• Prime factorization: 913 = 11 × 83
• The exponents in the prime factorization are 1 and 1. Adding one to each and multiplying we get (1 + 1)(1 + 1) = 2 × 2 = 4. Therefore 913 has exactly 4 factors.
• Factors of 913: 1, 11, 83, 913
• Factor pairs: 913 = 1 × 913 or 11 × 83
• 913 has no square factors that allow its square root to be simplified. √913 ≈ 30.2158899