I started off by trying to make the children stand as close to each other as possible but still make squares. I did this by drawing the pool out on a white board.
I found that the smallest ribbon square that is possible is one that has an area of one tile as if the children each stand on a tile where there is another child on the one next to them all the ribbons will be really close to each other and i will be a one tile by one tile square.
Next I tried to to make the children as far apart as possibly to make the largest one possible.
I found that the biggest one possible would have an area of twenty tiles as if each child stood in a corner of the pool and held two ribbons, one in each direction making a right angles he square would be five tiles by five tiles. If they aren't allowed to stand in the corners however, the largest possible square would have an area of sixteen tiles as there would be two children on each side of the pool and they would have three whole tiles in between them so the square would be four tiles by four tiles.
If you need to contact someone about this my teacher's email is jessica.Wright@tts.edu.sg.
Thank you for reading.