Math Challenge

This week the math challenge was to figure out which colour of teddy bears had the most. All I put out was the bucket of teddy bears and half a sheet of orange, purple, blue, yellow, green and yellow construction paper. These were all the instructions the students were given. Two students were asked to work at the centre at a time. Two boys were the first to take the challenge. They divided the half sheet of construction paper between themselves. They each started placing all the green bears on the green paper, the red bears on the red paper and continued in this manner until all the bears were on the paper. They noticed there were still yellow bears in the bucket but the half sheet was full of bears. So one of the boys went to the creation centre and got a full sheet (rather than half a sheet) of yellow construction paper and transferred all the yellow teddy bears to the whole sheet. They explained that yellow had the most bears because they needed a big sheet of paper. One of the other boys decided they had to count the other bears to find out which other colour had the most. They worked out that they would take the bears off the paper and put them back into the container so they would be able to count them the right way.

Look at all the problem solving that went on with one simple challenge. 

The challenges for the rest of this week are: Which colour of big teddy bears has the most? Which colour of medium teddy bears has the least? Which colour of the tiny teddy bears has the most/least?