Thursday, August 23, 2007

Word Problems for the Morbid

We are using Christian Light math this year and really liking it. One interesting thing about their curriculum is that all the word problems for a particular Light Unit (17 lessons, including 2 quizzes and a test) are centered around a theme.

I was grading Ruth's math yesterday and came across the following two word problems. The theme is the ocean.

  • A shark is not a good mother. After giving birth, she may eat some of her babies. If 9 mother sharks had 50 babies each, how many baby sharks is that?
Ohh - kayy... But then, even better...

  • Those hungry mother sharks gobbled up 27 of the babies before they could escape. How many baby sharks were left?
I'm probably weird, but this just cracks me up. It must appeal to the slightly-macabre sense of humor I have. Where is that ROFL smiley, anyway?

3 comments:

Darcy @ m3b said...

LOL!

Oh that would so appeal to the boybarians who like stuff like "If the Emperor has 500 clone troopers, but then cuts of the heads of 78 of them, how many clone troopers will get defeated by Jedi Warriors when they attack the Death Star?" ;)

Rhonda said...

Oh, yeah. That would be perfect for my son!

Tami, full-time mom; part-time foodie said...

The way CLE Math goes with a theme in each book makes so much sense! The theme in dd's current book is "Australia". Now you've got me wanting to go read the word problems just for fun. We've all heard of 'living' math, Rhonda, but you've got a new thing here -- killer math!!!

: )
Tami