You never want to bump into something with your car – that’s called an accident. But sometimes an accident can turn out for the best. The Schantz family was driving when their car ran over some lumpy bags left on the road. It turns out those bags were full of money! The family did the right thing and brought the mystery money to the police, who figured out it was supposed to go to a bank. And whoever lost those moneybags had a million and one reasons to be thankful.
Wee ones: Which is more: 1 dollar, or 2 dollars?
Little kids: If you find a lost hat on Monday and then find the hat’s owner 2 days later, does the owner get their hat back before the weekend? Bonus: If you split up 10 dollars evenly between your 2 pockets, but 1 pocket has a hole and you lose the money, how many dollars are left in the other pocket?
Big kids: Can you “spell” 1 million out in numbers? Bonus: Sometimes there’s a reward for returning lost items. If there was a 10% reward on $200 lost dollars, how many dollars would that reward be?
Answers:
Wee ones: 2 dollars is more, because 2 is more than 1.
Little kids: Yes, the owner gets the hat back on Wednesday. Bonus: 5 dollars.
Big kids: 1,000,000. Bonus: 20 dollars, because 10% is 10 parts out of every 100, or 1/10, and 1/10 of 200 is 20.
Laura Bilodeau Overdeck is founder and president of Bedtime Math Foundation. Her goal is to make math as playful for kids as it was for her when she was a child. Her mom had Laura baking before she could walk, and her dad had her using power tools at a very unsafe age, measuring lengths, widths and angles in the process. Armed with this early love of numbers, Laura went on to get a BA in astrophysics from Princeton University, and an MBA from the Wharton School of Business; she continues to star-gaze today. Laura’s other interests include her three lively children, chocolate, extreme vehicles, and Lego Mindstorms.