Motivate multiplication in the candy aisle! Suppose you want to buy candy to reward your students for tasks. What is the cheapest candy per piece? Gummy Bears? Sour Patch Kids? Mike & Ike? Pose this question and comment below with pictures of what your students found!
Allow them to use a calculator if you want a quick problem solving situation. If they need practice with multiplication and division by hand, take pictures of the candy bags, and have them do the computations at home. Reward them with, I don’t know, how about a gummy bear?
Solution strategy: First find how many pieces are in the bags. Read the bags to find how many pieces per serving there are (serving size). Then look for the number of servings and multiply.
# of pieces in a bag: Servings x serving size
Next find the cost for each piece by taking the cost of the bag divided by the number of pieces in the bag.
Unit price for a piece: Cost for a bag/# pieces in a bag
Examples:
Gummy Bears:
$4.88, 48 servings, serving size-12 pieces
Unit price: 4.88/(48x12)=.008, about 1 cent each.
Mike&Ike:
$4.98, 27 servings, serving size-16 pieces
Unit price: 4.98/(27x16)=.012, about 1 cent each.
Sour Patch Kids:
$1.88, 8 servings, serving size-12 pieces
Unit price: 1.88/(8x12)=.02, about 2 cents each.