Help! Brain not functioning. Maths homework question.

[MotleyCroup]

Embarrassed!

Y2 Maths question.

Dan makes sticks of 5 cubes.
He uses 85 cubes.

How many sticks does he make?

Show your working.

Ds hasn't looked at this yet so he may even surprise me and know the answer (if he's been doing this at school)

I know the answer is willing to leap out at me at any moment and I'll go, "of course" but I'm not seeing it. I'm a total idiot where Maths is concerned.

If I get it in the meantime I'll leap back on here (in between running to and from after school activity) and redeem myself.

isn't it 85 divided by 5 =17?

I may have misunderstood what a stick is though - 5 cubes piled on top of each other?

Isn't it 85 divided by 5? So 17.

85 divided by 5 = 17

:-)

Assuming they are all the same size then you just divide 85 by 5
Answer: 17

Thank you. It was the stick/cube thing confusing me.

I cannot now redeem myself but I thank you

no need for redemption. homework is hard, especially at the end of the day

I think 'towers' would have been clearer. 'Sticks' is really odd. You can't make sticks out of cubes, unless you glue them together.

Yr 2 showing your working will probably be a number line btw

Thanks all.

I looked at the diagram and imagined the sticks making each cube not a cube stick made out of five cubes!

Thanks 17leftfeet, we used the number line. Ds hasn't done division (or so he says) yet, although he knows his 5 times table. I told him to write down his 5's up to 85, how many do you get. Although in hindsight as he knows 5x12 we could have skipped straight to that and added on.

Gah! It's the methods they use to get to the answer which I'm not good at, although I now have my maths for Mum and Dads book so I'm determined to give it a go.

Maths actually fills me with as much dread now as it did at school, does it show

I would imagine they are talking about multi-link cubes so when you join them together in real life they make a 'stick'.

My non functioning maths brain was looking at the drawing as five cubes stuck together with sticks, not a stick made out of five cubes. I initially thought you needed to work out how many sticks in total not how many stick cubes.

I see things in such a different way to everyone else ha!

I'm sure this is an old SATS paper too. It has boxes at the side with marks to enter?

Ah so you were making it much more complicated than it actually was

I was, Jingle. My maths brain always travels the longest route before it gets to the answer.