Weekly Rich Open Problems for Mathematical Problem Solving Grade 3
Bruce Williams. CreatingRealMathematicians.com
Problem Solving 1
My pet frog always jumps the same distance every jump.
Show how far he jumped after 50 jumps.
Solve using Pictures / Numbers / Words.
Problem Solving 2
I had to buy my Mum and my Dad a present each.
How much money did I spend and how much change do I have left?
Solve using Pictures / Numbers / Words.
Problem Solving 3
When I was having a picnic, there were some ants enjoying our lunch.
Then more came along.
After lunch most of the ants left.
How many ants were there?
Solve using Pictures / Numbers / Words.
Problem Solving 4
At my friends house there were the same number of fish in many tanks.
How many fish were there altogether?
Write the number sentences for this.
Solve using Pictures / Numbers / Words.
Problem Solving 5
Mum said it was easier for her to “count up” when working out her change at the store.
How can she do this?
Solve using Pictures / Numbers / Words.
Problem Solving 6
I caught some worms and put then in order from smallest to largest.
How long was each worm?
If I put them all in a line, how long would the line be?
Solve using Pictures / Numbers / Words.
Problem Solving 7
Me and my Mum made a blanket out of squares.
How many squares did we use?
Solve using Pictures / Numbers / Words.
Problem Solving 8
The cars in the parking garage were parked in an array.
Dad said he knew how many cars there were by multiplying.
How many cars were there?
Solve using Pictures / Numbers / Words.
Problem Solving 9
Mum bought me a bag of jelly beans to share with my friends.
How many jelly beans were in the bag, and how many did we each get? How many were left over?
Solve using Pictures / Numbers / Words.
Problem Solving 10
My money box had pennies, dimes and one dollar bills.
I had $1.25 in my money box.
Show at least three different ways I could have had $1.25 in my money box.
Solve using Pictures / Numbers / Words.
Problem Solving 11
I counted all the coins in my Mums purse.
Did she have enough money for my birthday present?
Solve using Pictures / Numbers / Words.
Problem Solving 12
The playground a the park was made of squares, rectangles, parallelograms and trapeziums, with one hexagon.
What did it look like?
Solve using Pictures / Numbers / Words.
Problem Solving 13
The fish at the aquarium were swimming in five huge arrays.
How many fish were there?
Solve using Pictures / Numbers / Words.
Problem Solving 14
My sisters new toy had faces, edges and vertices.
What did it look like?
Solve using Pictures / Numbers / Words.
Problem Solving 15
I sorted my bag of jelly beans into fractions for each colour.
What did they look like?
Solve using Pictures / Numbers / Words.
Problem Solving 16
Mum ordered the pizza in fractions.
What did she order and what did the pizza look like?
Solve using Pictures / Numbers / Words.
Problem Solving 17
We planted a garden with flowers.
What fraction was each type of flower.
What did our garden look like?
Solve using Pictures / Numbers / Words.
Problem Solving 18
For our trip to the theme park we had to divide our time among each of the rides we wanted to go on. We were there for 5 hours. How much time was spent at each ride if each ride took different times?
Solve using Pictures / Numbers / Words.
Problem Solving 19
Dad said he would double my allowance each week if I worked hard at school.
My allowance was $1:00. How much is it now?
Solve using Pictures / Numbers / Words.
Problem Solving 20
I noticed all the toys in the shop window were in arrays.
How many toys were there?
Solve using Pictures / Numbers / Words.
Problem Solving 21
The animals in the zoo lined up in order from oldest to youngest.
How old was each animal?
Solve using Pictures / Numbers / Words.
Problem Solving 22
The pet store had a graph of all the different pets in the store.
What did the graph look like?
Solve using Pictures / Numbers / Words.