Hopping on just one leg is hard. So more than 1,000 years ago, Roman soldiers got stronger by hopping through numbered squares drawn on the ground. Little kids liked the game so much that they copied it – and that’s where hopscotch came from! You can write whatever numbers you like, throw rocks to block squares, or make up your own rules. But you do have to hop.
Wee ones: What shapes do you see on this hopscotch board?
Little kids: If you write the numbers 1 through 8 in order on your hopscotch board, what number do you write before the 6? Bonus: If your hopscotch board has spaces 1 through 10, how many hops do you do if you land only on the odd numbers once each?
Big kids: If 6 people and their 6 pet bunnies start hopping, how many feet are hopping all together? (Remember: bunnies hop on 2 feet, but we don’t!) Bonus: If you number 1 through 12, and skip all the multiples of 4 as well as the non-4-multiple square your rock landed on, how many hops do you do to hop to the end and back?
The sky’s the limit: If a bunch of people and bunnies play hopscotch, and there are 8 players in total but 1 more bunny foot than people feet hopping, how many bunnies are playing?
Answers:
Wee ones: Squares and rectangles (both are 4-sided shapes), and at the end, almost a half-circle.
Little kids: The 5. Bonus: 5 hops: on the 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9.
Big kids: 18 feet. Bonus: 16 hops, since you do 8 in each direction. You skip 4 squares: the 4, 8, 12, and rock.
The sky’s the limit: 3 bunnies, who hop on 6 feet while the 5 people hop on 5. You can start with 8 people on 8 feet, and each time you swap in a bunny for a person, the bunny feet go up by 2 while the people feet go down by 1, so the gap grows by 3. The gap started at +8 for the people and you need a gap of -1, so you have to change the gap by 9. You’ll need 3 swaps to do that, so 3 bunnies.
