Jelly Bean Math

Psst: bet you didn’t know this, but we have it on good authority. The Easter Bunny has a fondness for MATH!

This year, when you celebrate your holiday, try taking out this activity on Easter morning…before your child has munched through all his Easter Basket candy, that is! The brain teaser math problems below are written for different colors of jelly beans, but any three kinds of candy will work just fine, as long as they are different.

What You Need:

• Jelly bean puzzler problems
• Pencil

What You Do:

In each puzzle below, each basket is made of purple, pink, and yellow jellybeans. But in each one, the number of beans of each color will be different. Use the clues to figure out how many of each color will be in each basket!

Basket #1:

3 purple jellybeans

Twice as many pink jellybeans as purple ones

12 jellybeans in all

Basket #2:

This basket contains 16 jellybeans

½ of the beans are pink

¼ of the beans are yellow

Basket #3:

There are at 12 jellybeans in this basket

There is one more purple than yellow jellybean

There is one more yellow than pink jellybean

Basket #4:

½ of the jellybeans in this basket are yellow

3 of the jellybeans are purple

There are double as many yellow jellybeans as there are purple ones

Basket #5:

There are 3 times as many yellow jellybeans as pink ones

There is one more purple bean than yellow ones

There are 15 beans in all

When you’re done with our puzzlers, can you make up your own?

What’s Going On: You don’t need to use fancy terms or anything, but this math puzzle invites your kids to practice, hands-on, the very important fundamental concepts of ratio and proportion. We use these concepts all the time in math and in science; now’s a great time to help them make clear, natural sense!  

Answers: Basket 1: 3 purple, 6 pink, 3 yellow; Basket 2: 8 pink, 4 yellow, 4 purple; Basket 3: 4 yellow, 5 purple, 3 pink; Basket 4: 3 purple, 6 yellow, 3 pink;  5. 2 pink; 6 yellow; 7 purple