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Ages: 5-11
Explain to the children that you would like to buy an ice cream. Each ice cream cone can have three flavours of ice cream on top of each other from the choices below:
- Strawberry
- Vanilla
- Chocolate
Ask them how many different combinations of ice cream you could have with those flavours, e.g.
| Strawberry Vanilla Chocolate | Strawberry Chocolate Vanilla | Vanilla Strawberry Chocolate | Vanilla Chocolate Strawberry | Chocolate Vanilla Strawberry | Chocolate Strawberry Vanilla |
They could record the different combinations in a variety of ways, i.e. using pictures / colours / writing / codes. Encourage them to work systematically and logically where appropriate.
Possible Extensions:
- What would happen if you could have more than one of each type of flavour on your ice cream?
- What would happen if you could have four flavours on your ice cream, e.g. Strawberry, Vanilla, Chocolate and Mint?
- Could they work out the number of combinations without having to write them all down?