Dog's Colourful Day by Emma Dodd
Publisher: Puffin
ISBN: 9780140568769
Image
Dog starts the day with just one black spot on his left ear. Then a drip of red jam lands on his back, and Dog has two spots now! Throughout his messy day, Dog gets covered in spots from different things, and by the end of the day he has ten different coloured spots. Finally, Dog is given a bath and he goes back to having just one black spot on his ear.
The repetition of 'Now Dog has ___ spots' in this story reinforces the idea that as we count from one to ten, each number is one more than the one before it. At the end, Vicky counts all ten of Dog's spots, and children can count along using both the picture of Dog and the numerals on the page as a guide. Children can also begin to make links with the idea of subtraction, as the bath takes away all of Dog's new spots and just leaves him with the black spot on his ear that he started with.