Maths Blog

Mariele the dog eats dinner

This video is about Mariele the 12 year old dog sitting at a fancy table in what looks like a fancy restaurant -- but a person is hiding under her shirt. He waves his hands around as if they're the dog's hands.

The dog "reads" the menu, waits for dinner to be served.What's amazing is how nicely Mariele, who is a German shorthair pointer, sits and waits to be served; she's probably better behaved than most children. How much dog and human must have practiced, you see that the amount of food they ate really adds up.

Have a go at answering these questions:

Koru Whanau:
Yr 1: If the person's 2 hands and Mariele's 4 paws could each hold a fork, how many forks could they hold altogether?

Yr 2: If Mariele takes 5 bites of carrot and 2 bites of potato, and there are 10 bites of food on the plate, how many bites did Mariele leave behind?

Kowhai whanau:
The dog performs for about 3 minutes. If they practice the scene 8 times back to back , how long does that take?

Kauri Whanau:
Mariele has to pay for dinner every time. If dinner cost $4.50, how much does she pay for those 8 meals?

Extra for experts: The actor can't see a thing while stabbing at the food. In feeding the dog 5 bites of carrot and 2 bites of potato, in how many different orders could Mariele have eaten those? (Hint if needed: Think about what number bites the potatoes could be.)

How tall is the tallest Lego Tower?

Someone is always building big new things out of Lego, and this Lego record is an exciting one: the world's tallest Lego tower. Built in Budapest, Hungary out of 450,000 bricks, it stands over 34 metres high.

Here are some questions:

Koru whanau:

Yr 1: If the tower uses blue, red, green, white and yellow bricks, how many colours is that?

Yr 2: The tower was finished on a Wednesday and stood for only 5 days. On what day was it taken down?

Kowhai whanau: If you're in charge of adding 70 bricks onto the tower, and you're counting the bricks by 10s, what numbers do you say? Can you write a number story for this?

Kauri whanau:If the 450,000-brick tower uses 5 colours equally, how many bricks of each color does it use?

What other questions could you create from this amazing lego tower? Please comment below.