What’s in the Vacuum?

Ava’s vacuuming her room this afternoon. Oh wait, Ava. Maybe you should pick up the – things on the floor. Uh oh. Looks like Ava vacuumed up a lot of things she didn’t mean to. Let’s take a closer look.

Ava was able to get all these things out of the vacuum! This bar graph shows her data more clearly.

It looks like she accidentally vacuumed up 19 hair pins, 2 charms, 16 beads, 8 pieces of string, and 6 rubber bands. Now that we have the data, let’s see how well we understand it!

How many fewer rubber bands than pieces of string were in the vacuum? 4, 2, or 3? Correct!

The word fewer helps us know this is a subtraction problem. Subtract the number of rubber bands from the number of pieces of string to get the answer 2.

How many beads, charms, and hair pins were in the vacuum? 37, 40, or 29? That’s right!

This word problem is asking us to add. Simply add the number of beads, charms, and hair pins together to find the total of 37!

How many more hair pins than beads were in the vacuum? 6, 9, or 3? Yes!

The words more and than in this word problem are telling us to subtract. We just need to subtract the number of beads from the number of hair pins. 19 minus 16 equals 3.

Well done! You analyzed and solved word problems using Ava’s bar graph. Now Ava knows to be a little more careful with the vacuum!