The Weekend Zoo: Story Problems

Lately Mr. Fantastic has been giving the big kids math problems for fun. (Yep, we are an entire household of dorks.) The kids love it, and I have been amazed at their math capabilities. It is so neat to see the wheels turning and to watch how they figure things out. Questions like, “If each of our chickens laid two eggs, how many eggs would we have?” would make me cringe at first because I was certain they were too hard. But when Monkey came up with 8, I was astounded.


Well, a few days ago, Monkey and I were eating lunch, and by some minor miracle… it was quiet. I don’t know why, but I felt the need to change that. So I asked Monkey some story problems. He answered a few, and then decided that he wanted to be the “asker.” Oh boy, I thought, let’s see where this goes. So here are the questions I had to answer…

• Let’s say there are 100 houses in this area. And we wanted to visit all of them… and the library. What time do we get home?

• One day, 100 kids came over to play. And we were all out in the backyard. And only 2 of them were playing with Lamb. And then some villains came and went into our house. But we were all outside. And then there was a fire, and the villains ran out. And they stopped, dropped, and rolled. Why won’t the fire come off of them?

Hmmmm… Now I’m not sure if he’s going to be a mad scientist or a philosopher…