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A Social and Holistic Approach to Numeracy
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Three Bean Salad* (individual or group activity)

Each salad contains Red beans, Lima beans, and Black-eyed peas (also known as Black-eyes).

1
This salad contains:
2 Lima beans
Twice as many Red beans as Lima beans
10 beans in all
5
This salad contains:
12 beans
½ of the beans are Red
Lima beans make up ¼ of the salad
2
This salad contains:
4 Red beans
½ as many Black-eyed peas as Red beans
10 beans in all
6
This salad contains:
At least 12 beans
It has one more Lima bean than Red beans
It has one more Red bean than Black-eyes
3
Lima beans make up ½ of this salad.
The salad has exactly 2 Red beans
The number of Lima beans is double the number of Red beans
7
This salad contains:
3 times as many Red beans as Black-eyes
One more Lima bean than Red beans
8 beans in all
4
This salad contains:
The same number of Red beans as Lima beans
3 more Black-eyes than Red beans
A total of 18 beans
8
This salad contains:
An equal number of Red beans and Black-eyes
5 more Lima beans than Red beans
No more than 20 beans

Make up a different salad.
Write instructions for someone else to make your salad.

* Reprinted from Family Math (Stenmark, J., Thompson, V., Cossey, R., Lawrence Hall of Science, University of California, Berkeley CA, 1986, page 135)