What is the tastiest way to use your math skills? Our vote goes to ordering and paying for pizza! From deciding how much pizza to get per person, to figuring out the time it will take to get there and how much to pay and tip the delivery person, math is involved in every step of this delicious process!

Would you believe it if we told you that a dog could tutor for math? It’s true! Well...kind of. We’re featuring a few shelter dogs in this week’s word problem to encourage kids math learning. After all, we know that the best way to learn math is to apply it in real world situations.

This word problem challenges students to practice their elementary school math skills such as addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. It may look “ruff”, but trust us, this question is a walk in the park! 

Question: Grace, Ruby, and James volunteer to walk shelter dogs. Grace walks half as many dogs as Ruby, who walks 5 more dogs than James. James walks 9 dogs. How many dogs did Grace walk?

Take your time working out the particulars. When you're ready, look below to compare your solution to ours.

Solution: If Ruby walked 5 more dogs than James, then she walked 9 + 5 = 14 dogs. Grace walked half as many as that, so she walked half of 14 = 7 dogs.

Do you have World Cup fever? We do! Then again, what’s not to love about soccer (fútbol) when the World Cup incorporates so much of our favorite thing: MATH! This post was originally written in 2018, during the FIFA men's world cup, but now it's the turn of women's teams around the world and we are just as excited!