Lower Elementary:
Question: Tiffany has 8 red bows, 6 blue bows, and 7 green bows. How many bows does Tiffany have altogether?
Answer: 21 bows
Solution: To find the total number of bows Tiffany has, add the number of bows of each color. 8 + 6 + 7. When adding 8 and 6, if we break 6 into 2 + 4, we have 8 + 2 + 4 = 10 + 4 = 14. 14 + 7 can be done similarly by breaking 7 into 6 + 1. 14 + 6 + 1 = 20 + 1 = 21. Tiffany has 21 bows.
Upper Elementary:
Question: Brian had 2 gallons of milk. He drank 3/8 of that amount in a day. How many cups of milk did Brian drink?
Answer: 6 pints
Solution: There are 4 quarts in a gallon. So there are 8 quarts in 2 gallons. If Brian drank 3/8 of the milk, that means he drank 3 quarts of milk. Since there are 2 pints in a quart, there are 6 pints in 3 quarts. So, Brian drank 6 pints of milk.
Middle School:
Question: Lilian is making a poster for an event. She is going to take a piece of paper with the information and put it on blue construction paper so that the poster has a blue border. The blue construction paper is 12 feet by 14 feet and the information page is 2 feet shorter than the blue construction paper lengthwise and widthwise. What is the area of the blue construction paper that is not covered by the information page?
Answer: 48 square feet
Solution: First let’s find the dimensions of the information page. The blue construction paper is 12 feet by 14 feet and the information page is 2 feet shorter than the blue construction paper widthwise and lengthwise. That means the information page is 10 feet by 12 feet. The area of the information page is 10 × 12 = 120 square feet. The total area of the blue construction paper is 12 × 14 = 168 square feet. To find the area of the blue construction paper not covered by the information page, we subtract the two values. 168 – 120 = 48. The area of the blue construction paper not covered by the information page is 48 square feet.
Algebra and Up:
Question: Harvey sold t-shirts for $8 and pairs of shoes for $11. He was able to earn $273. If he sold a total of 30 items, how many t-shirts and how many pairs of shoes did Harvey sell?
Answer: 19 t-shirts and 11 pairs of shoes
Solution: Let t be the number of t-shirts sold and s be the number of pairs of shoes sold. We can make two equations, one for the number of items sold and one for the cost of the items.
t + s = 30
8t + 11s = 273
One way to solve this problem is to use the elimination method and multiply the first equation by –8.
–8t – 8s = –240
8t + 11s = 273
Combine the equations.
3s = 33
Divide by 3.
s = 11
So Harvey sold 11 pairs of shoes. To get the number of t-shirts sold, we can substitute 11 for s in either of the original equations. Let’s substitute it into the first equation.
t + 11 = 30
Subtract 11.
t = 19.
Harvey sold 19 t-shirts and 11 pairs of shoes.
