Exploring and noticing

Place four pebbles on the sand in the form of a square. Keep adding as few pebbles as necessary to double the area. How many extra pebbles are added each time?

What is the smallest number of tiles needed to tile this patio? Can you investigate patios of different sizes?

We need to wrap up this cube-shaped present, remembering that we can have no overlaps. What shapes can you find to use?

How could you put eight bean bags 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?

There are 78 prisoners in a square cell block of twelve cells. The clever prison warder arranged them so there were 25 along each wall of the prison block. How did he do it?

56 406 is the product of two consecutive numbers. What are these two numbers?

There are 44 people coming to a dinner party. There are 15 square tables that seat 4 people. Find a way to seat the 44 people using all 15 tables, with no empty places.

Using only six straight cuts, find a way to make as many pieces of pizza as possible. (The pieces can be different sizes and shapes).

Using the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 once and only once, and the operations x and ÷ once and only once, what is the smallest whole number you can make?