Urgent help please with maths homework

[Dancingdreamer]

Here is rhe question my 8 year old has come home with:

3 monkeys ate a total of 25 nuts. Each ate a different odd number of nuts.

How many nuts did each of the monkeys eat? Find as many different ways as you can.

We are busy doing number lists here and are sure there must be an easier way to work this out. Now run out of ideas. Anybody able to help please?

ClayDavis, you've contradicted yourself. If the homework is designed to differentiate, then by it's very nature that means "as many as you can find" means exactly that. If all were to be found then it would explicitly state that. I agree on the combinations though, each monkey is unique so 1 3 21 is different to 3 1 21 etc.

Hopefully after 6 and a half years, all the combinations would have been found by now!

They won't be expecting every single combination from everyone. Just as many as he can manage in a reasonable time. IMO it's a nice piece of work that allows for systematic and logical thinking.

Also if he doesn't do anything else, please make sure he's reading. It's so important.