Zoe’s Flower Garden

By: Ashley Terpstra

Illustrated by: Google Images
 Zoe’s Flower Garden
By: Ashley Terpstra

Illustrated by: Google Images

PA Math Standard: CC.2.2.3.A.1

Represent and solve problems involving multiplication and division.

Zoe was so excited that it was springtime. Her mother and her were going to start
a garden in their backyard. They have bought two different kind of plants to put in
their garden. She had sunflowers and cornflower seeds.
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“Zoe I have a job for you. I need you to figure out how many rows of each plant
there are going to be. There can be leftovers because we want all the rows to be
even. There can be eight plots in each row.” said Zoe’s mom.

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Zoe’s mom started by giving her a Ziplock bag that contained 24 seed packets of
sunflowers. Each packet would count as one plot. “Hmm… how many rows of sunflower
plots can I have?” said Zoe”. While Zoe was figuring out how many rows there needed to
be Zoe’s mom went off to get fertilizer and shovels from their shed.
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 Group 1:
8 sunflower
packets

Zoe sat and thought of what she could do to find out how many rows can she
make out of 24 packets if only eight packets of seeds in each row. “Ah ha I can
make groups of eight to find out how many rows I can have” shouted Zoe. Zoe
took the packets of sun flowers and started by counting eight packets of sun
flowers. She then created another group of eight packets of sunflower seeds. She
made one more group of eight when she ran out of sunflower seeds.
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 Group 1
Group 3
Group 2

Zoe’s mother came back and went over to check on Zoe to see how many rows
she came up with. “Zoe how many rows are needed for the sunflowers?” said
mom. Zoe counted how many groups of eight she made. “One, two, three. We
need three rows for the sunflowers “said Zoe. Zoe’s mom showed Zoe that she
made three groups of eight which is three times eight. Zoe’s mom then explained
that three times eights equals twenty-four which means that there should be no
leftover sunflower seed packets.
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 Zoe’s mom then gave Zoe her next task which was finding out how many rows of
cornflower could they plant. She gave Zoe seventeen seed packets of cornflower. Zoe
decided that she would use do the same thing that she did with the sunflower packets.

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 Group 1
Group2
1 leftover
Zoe counted out eight cornflower packets which created one row of cornflowers. Then
she counted out another group of eight packets. After making two groups of eight she
ended up having one packet leftover in her hand. “Mom, I have two rows of cornflower,
but I have one packet of cornflower seeds leftover” said Zoe. “Let me come over and
check what you have” said Zoe’s mom.
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 Group 1
Group2
1 leftover

Zoe’s mom first showed her that she made two groups of eights which means two
times eight. She had Zoe count how many packets there were altogether in the two
groups she made. Zoe started to count how many packets of cornflower seeds there
were. “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen,
fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. There are sixteen packets mom!” said Zoe.
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 Group 1
Group2
1 leftover

Zoe’s mom then showed her that two times eight is sixteen. “But wait, but there were
seventeen packets of cornflower seeds?” said Zoe. “Yes, there were seventeen packets
of corn flowers, but eight only goes into seventeen two times evenly. That is why there
is one packet of cornflower seeds leftover” said Zoe’s mom.

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 1
2 5
3 4

“Zoe now that we know how many rows there needs to be, can you figure out how
many holes we need to dig in total” said Zoe’s mom. Zoe thought about it starting
out with thinking of what she already knows. She knows that there are three rows
of sunflowers and two rows of cornflower. She decided she needed to add all the
rows of flowers together. When she added the rows together, she got five rows all
together.
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Zoe knew had five rows of eight. She remembered that five rows of eight also can be
represented by five times eight. What does five times eight equal Zoe ponder in her
head. All the sudden a light bulb went off her in head. “That’s it!” said Zoe excitingly.
Zoe remembered that she could count by fives using her fingers. “Five, ten, fifteen,
twenty, twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five, forty” said Zoe as she counted on her fingers.

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“Mom there needs to be forty holes made for all the flowers to be planted. I can
help you dig all the holes in the ground and then sprinkle the seeds in” said Zoe.
Zoe’s mom gave her a shovel and allowed her to help create the holes in the
ground. Zoe’s mom was so proud of how Zoe came up with the rows of the
flowers all by herself with the little help of math.
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Even you can create your own garden using multiplication and division. What
would your garden look like?
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 Additional Tools to use in Classroom
to Solve Problem

- Use ten frames as your rows of garden and two sets of different colored chips
for the seed packets
- Use two different sets of connect cubes to represent the packets of seeds

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