Other tags that relate to Building with Cubes
Visualising. Combinations. Investigations. Cubes & cuboids. Interlocking cubes. Interactivities. Tangram. Practical Activity. Working systematically. Games.There are 319 results
Broad Topics > Using, Applying and Reasoning about Mathematics > Working systematically
Waiting for Blast Off
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
10 space travellers are waiting to board their spaceships. There are two rows of seats in the waiting room. Using the rules, where are they all sitting? Can you find all the possible ways?
Map Folding
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
Take a rectangle of paper and fold it in half, and half again, to make four smaller rectangles. How many different ways can you fold it up?
Display Boards
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
Design an arrangement of display boards in the school hall which fits the requirements of different people.
The Third Dimension
Age 5 to 11 Challenge Level:
Here are four cubes joined together. How many other arrangements of four cubes can you find? Can you draw them on dotty paper?
Cuboid-in-a-box
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
What is the smallest cuboid that you can put in this box so that you cannot fit another that's the same into it?
More Transformations on a Pegboard
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
Use the interactivity to find all the different right-angled triangles you can make by just moving one corner of the starting triangle.
Tangram Tangle
Age 5 to 7 Challenge Level:
If you split the square into these two pieces, it is possible to fit the pieces together again to make a new shape. How many new shapes can you make?
Three Sets of Cubes, Two Surfaces
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
How many models can you find which obey these rules?
Shunting Puzzle
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
Can you shunt the trucks so that the Cattle truck and the Sheep truck change places and the Engine is back on the main line?
Single Track
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
What is the best way to shunt these carriages so that each train can continue its journey?
Knight's Swap
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
Swap the stars with the moons, using only knights' moves (as on a chess board). What is the smallest number of moves possible?
Brush Loads
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
How can you arrange the 5 cubes so that you need the smallest number of Brush Loads of paint to cover them? Try with other numbers of cubes as well.
Creating Cubes
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
Arrange 9 red cubes, 9 blue cubes and 9 yellow cubes into a large 3 by 3 cube. No row or column of cubes must contain two cubes of the same colour.
Jigsaw Pieces
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
How will you go about finding all the jigsaw pieces that have one peg and one hole?
Inside Triangles
Age 5 to 7 Challenge Level:
How many different triangles can you draw on the dotty grid which each have one dot in the middle?
Three Ball Line Up
Age 5 to 7 Challenge Level:
Use the interactivity to help get a feel for this problem and to find out all the possible ways the balls could land.
Putting Two and Two Together
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
In how many ways can you fit two of these yellow triangles together? Can you predict the number of ways two blue triangles can be fitted together?
Making Cuboids
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
Let's say you can only use two different lengths - 2 units and 4 units. Using just these 2 lengths as the edges how many different cuboids can you make?
Cereal Packets
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
How can you put five cereal packets together to make different shapes if you must put them face-to-face?
Triangle Edges
Age 5 to 7 Challenge Level:
How many triangles can you make using sticks that are 3cm, 4cm and 5cm long?
Tessellate the Triominoes
Age 5 to 7 Challenge Level:
What happens when you try and fit the triomino pieces into these two grids?
Multilink Cubes
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
If you had 36 cubes, what different cuboids could you make?
Counters
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
Hover your mouse over the counters to see which ones will be removed. Click to remove them. The winner is the last one to remove a counter. How you can make sure you win?
Tetrafit
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
A tetromino is made up of four squares joined edge to edge. Can this tetromino, together with 15 copies of itself, be used to cover an eight by eight chessboard?
Triangle Animals
Age 5 to 7 Challenge Level:
How many different ways can you find to join three equilateral triangles together? Can you convince us that you have found them all?
3 Blocks Towers
Age 5 to 7 Challenge Level:
Take three differently coloured blocks - maybe red, yellow and blue. Make a tower using one of each colour. How many different towers can you make?
Open Boxes
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
Can you work out how many cubes were used to make this open box? What size of open box could you make if you had 112 cubes?
Penta Place
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
Penta people, the Pentominoes, always build their houses from five square rooms. I wonder how many different Penta homes you can create?
What Shape and Colour?
Age 5 to 7 Challenge Level:
Can you fill in the empty boxes in the grid with the right shape and colour?
Dienes' Logiblocs
Age 5 to 7 Challenge Level:
This problem focuses on Dienes' Logiblocs. What is the same and what is different about these pairs of shapes? Can you describe the shapes in the picture?
First Connect Three for Two
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
First Connect Three game for an adult and child. Use the dice numbers and either addition or subtraction to get three numbers in a straight line.
Two on Five
Age 5 to 11 Challenge Level:
Take 5 cubes of one colour and 2 of another colour. How many different ways can you join them if the 5 must touch the table and the 2 must not touch the table?
Same Length Trains
Age 5 to 7 Challenge Level:
How many trains can you make which are the same length as Matt's and Katie's, using rods that are identical?
Fencing Lambs
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
A thoughtful shepherd used bales of straw to protect the area around his lambs. Explore how you can arrange the bales.
Cubes Here and There
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
How many shapes can you build from three red and two green cubes? Can you use what you've found out to predict the number for four red and two green?
Quadrilaterals
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
How many DIFFERENT quadrilaterals can be made by joining the dots on the 8-point circle?
Are You Well Balanced?
Age 5 to 7 Challenge Level:
Can you work out how to balance this equaliser? You can put more than one weight on a hook.
Find the Difference
Age 5 to 7 Challenge Level:
Place the numbers 1 to 6 in the circles so that each number is the difference between the two numbers just below it.
Stairs
Age 5 to 11 Challenge Level:
This challenge is to design different step arrangements, which must go along a distance of 6 on the steps and must end up at 6 high.
Difference
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
Place the numbers 1 to 10 in the circles so that each number is the difference between the two numbers just below it.
One to Fifteen
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
Can you put the numbers from 1 to 15 on the circles so that no consecutive numbers lie anywhere along a continuous straight line?
New House
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
In this investigation, you must try to make houses using cubes. If the base must not spill over 4 squares and you have 7 cubes which stand for 7 rooms, what different designs can you come up with?
Pasta Timing
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
Nina must cook some pasta for 15 minutes but she only has a 7-minute sand-timer and an 11-minute sand-timer. How can she use these timers to measure exactly 15 minutes?
Hexpentas
Age 5 to 11 Challenge Level:
How many different ways can you find of fitting five hexagons together? How will you know you have found all the ways?
Square Corners
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
What is the greatest number of counters you can place on the grid below without four of them lying at the corners of a square?
Triangles All Around
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
Can you find all the different triangles on these peg boards, and find their angles?
Peg and Pin Boards
Age 5 to 11
This article for teachers suggests activities based on pegboards, from pattern generation to finding all possible triangles, for example.
A Square of Numbers
Age 7 to 11 Challenge Level:
Can you put the numbers 1 to 8 into the circles so that the four calculations are correct?
NRICH is part of the family of activities in the Millennium Mathematics Project.