The Shopping Basket

Steven goes to buy six eggs, five bananas, four apples, three oranges, two doughnuts and a packet of crisps. The 'one less than' pattern of the consecutive numbers is illustrated as a triangular pattern. However, although Steven cunningly foils a series of thefts by various animals, he loses one of each of the items (presenting a new number pattern). Children can reproduce the 'one less than' number patterns and play games in pairs of secretly stealing one item (while the other child hides their eyes) and finding what has been taken. Older children can add rows to explore triangular numbers.