Q6. Cupcakes for the fair

This is for the older sister, who also likes maths, but loves dancing and singing much more.

There's a cake fair in Sidebay School every year, around Valentine's Day. This year there's a competition for the class that bakes and sell the most cupcakes. Fourth class won this year.

Between all the classmates in 4th class they baked 96 cupcakes. Two thirds ( 2/3 ) were sold for €1 each. Of what was left, half was sold in the sale for €0.50 each. The rest, I am afraid, was eaten by the hungry children in 4th class!

Your task is to find out how much money they make, but I am going to break down in little questions.

(a) How many cupcakes were sold for €1?

(b) How much money did they get for the €1 cupcakes?

(c) How many cupcakes were sold for €0.50?

(d) How much money did they get for the €0.50 cupcakes?

(e) How much money did they get altogether?

And an extra question just because:
(f) Assuming that each each ate one cake, how many children were they in 4th class?

Q5 Farmer Joe and the ducks

This is for the little brother, he wants a maths question with Farmer Joe. He said he likes maths.

Farmer Joe went for a walk by the river and found out that the Dina, the duck, had new babies (ducklings).  When he got home he told his wife. His wife asked how many ducklings did she have.

Farmer Joe, who never gives a straight answer, said: "A few. An even number, less than 10. I'd have to use both hands to show you how many. Not 6."

Can you guess how many ducklings did Dina have?

Q4. The Supermarket

We're back home after going away in the Easter break. To get back in shape,  let's start with a shopping mathematical problem.

Lulu's mom gave her €20 and asked her to go to Centra to get some groceries. TheThe list had the following items:

2 KG ONIONS
1 PACKETS OF SUGAR
1 FISH
SWEETS (2 EACH FOR LULU AND LITTLE BROTHER)

That's what was available at Centra's:

Lulu bought all that was in the list.  Did she have enough money? If so, how much change did she get?

Work out how much each item cost.

Then find out how much all the items together cost.

A question for your brother

This question is for your younger brother.

There was this woman who you know very well. Her name is Terry and she loves animals. She used to have 2 dogs, a cat, 3 doves, 2 donkeys and a rabbit. How many animals did she have altogether?

Do you remember Farmer Joe?

 Well done, you completed the questions in the first post and yesterday you had played maths bingo in the iPad.

Do you remember Farmer Joe, who has sheep in his farm? Farmer Joe never has a straight answer, no matter what you asked him.

Today you are going to help him. Blizzard, his white cat, is on the roof of Joe's barn and neeeds to be rescued.

The barn is 5 meters high. Farmer Joe, with his arms up, can reach up to 2 meters. He has 3 questions for you.

(a) Can he reach the cat without any help?

(b) If he needs a ladder, how high the ladder has to be so he can reach the cat?

If you're stuck, try to make a drawing with the barn, Joe and the ladder. Sometimes drawing helps.

(c) Or, if instead of a ladder he decides to stack up sheep on top of each other, like this:

If each sheep is 1 meter high, how many sheep will he needs to reach the top of the barn?

Drawing might help again.

Plus, minus, multiplication and division

Sometimes when you are given a problem, the first thing you have to do is to work out if you need to add, divide, multiply or subtract. That's what we're going to practise today.

Here's the story:

There are two teachers in the Sidebay school. Ms Lane and Mr Mura.

Ms Lane's class has 30 students. Ms Lane was given 90 blank pages to give to her students. Answer the following questions:

(a) If she distributed all the pages equaly among her students, how many pages would each student get?

Work out first which operation you have to do (multiply, divide, add or subtract) then write down your answer.

(b) If instead she decided to give each student only two pages, how many pages would she have left?

This questions is a bit harder because there are two steps to get the final result. Try to work out on your own, if you get stuck, ready the tiny clues below.

First find out how many pages the students got altogether. Then find out how many pages were left.

(c) Suppose Ms Lane gave two pages to each student, and gave the remainder to Mr Mura to give to his class. Mr Mura has 15 students in his class. How many pages did Mr Mura's students get?

Hello and Welcome

Welcome to "A Mathemagical Mind"!

Here we are going to post mathematical questions for you to answer in your own time. Some questions are going to be easy, some more or less, and some might be a bit hard. Don't hesitate to ask for help.