A hotel is a place where you stay while away from home. If you’re in Kenya, you might also have a giraffe staying with you! Jock and Betty Leslie-Melville have a ranch where giraffes live to stay safe, because giraffes are sadly endangered. Jock and Betty took in their first giraffe in 1974, a baby named Daisy. She was already 8 feet tall and weighed over 450 pounds! Many giraffes have lived there since. Human visitors like you can feed the giraffes from the breakfast table or from your own room window. Let’s just hope the giraffes don’t hit their head on the ceiling!
Wee ones: If 3 giraffes come down to breakfast and you feed carrots to 2 of them, how many giraffes are still waiting for a snack? Use your fingers to count if it helps!
Little kids: If the doors at the hotel are 6 feet high and Daisy was already 8 feet tall, how much did she have to duck to walk through? Bonus: Daisy probably grew 10 feet taller by the time she was grown up. How tall did she become?
Big kids: If there are 12 giraffes at the Manor and the guests feed 4 apples to each one, how many apples do the giraffes munch down? Bonus: When you were born, you were probably only around 20 inches tall. How much taller was Daisy at 8 feet?
Answers:
Wee ones: 1 giraffe.
Little kids: 2 feet. Bonus: 18 feet.
Big kids: 48 apples. Bonus: 76 inches, since Daisy was 96 inches.
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.