Exploring and noticing

While we were sorting some papers we found 3 strange sheets which seemed to come from small books but there were page numbers at the foot of each page. Did the pages come from the same book?

If I use 12 green tiles to represent my lawn, how many different ways could I arrange them? How many border tiles would I need each time?

Vincent and Tara are making triangles with the class construction set. They have a pile of strips of different lengths. How many different triangles can they make?

Cut differently-sized square corners from a square piece of paper to make boxes without lids. Do they all have the same volume?

Can you continue this pattern of triangles and begin to predict how many sticks are used for each new "layer"?

What happens if you join every second point on this circle? How about every third point? Try with different steps and see if you can predict what will happen.

Choose any three by three square of dates on a calendar page...

The letters of the word ABACUS have been arranged in the shape of a triangle. How many different ways can you find to read the word ABACUS from this triangular pattern?

How could you put eight beanbags in the hoops so that there are four in the blue hoop, five in the red and six in the yellow? Can you find all the ways of doing this?

Write the numbers up to 64 in an interesting way so that the shape they make at the end is interesting, different, more exciting ... than just a square.