This week, in Primary 7, we found out what was in the mysterious “Box of Secrets”. When we opened it, there were lots of sealed envelopes and a cheque for £125.00 from Virgin Bank (now, that’s a lot of money!), made payable to Bellsquarry Primary School – Primary 7.  Next, using lolly pop sticks (to ensure fairness), Mr Hunter split us into groups of 4 and said that everyone in the class had been given £5 to start up our own business.  So, with each group having 4 team members, this means we have £20.00 to invest, do our Market Research, buy or make our product and, finally, sell it to customers at our Christmas fayre – hopefully making a profit along the way! We might even re-invest it later to make even more money!  However, before we can start the fun part, we had to paint the “Box of Secrets”. This was Junior Apprentice task #1 or as Mr Hunter put it, ‘our test to see if were up for the job.’  Would we be ‘hired’ or ‘fired’ before the real fun part started!

Our first problem was to decide on how much paint was needed.  We were given a picture of the box and told that the side was 1.6m.  Some of the groups drew a net of a cube and worked out the area of one side and multiplied it by 6.  Other groups simply found the area of one side and then added their answer six times – both ways worked and we got the same answer. 

One problem which lots of us had was when we added up all of the sides.  We realised it was the area and not the perimeter which we were to work out!  Another problem which was that the side was 1.6m.  Some groups tried to convert this into centimetres and then multiply this, but 160 x 160 x 6 started to become too difficult so most settled on trying to multiply the decimals together.

To make it easier, we estimated that 1.6cm was closer to 2cm, so our answer couldn’t be more than 2cm x 2cm = 4cm² x 6cm = 24cm².  Eventually, some groups thought they had the answer to the first part of the question, until we read over the question again………………’two coats of paint!’ Argghh!  So we had to multiply our answer by 2.  Next, once we knew the area of the cube, we had to work which option was the best: paint from B&Q or paint from Wickes?  This was difficult as there was a lot of information.  Mr Hunter reminded us to highlight the information which we needed and to use that – this helped us a lot! 

We worked out that the 2 litre tin in B & Q cost £3.75 as there was a 25% off sale and this would cover 20m² (1 litre covers 10m²), so we would need two tins.  This would cost us £7.50.  We worked out the 25% off part by working out 10% of £5.00, then doubling it to find 20%.  Then we halved 10% to find 5% before adding it all together.  Then we took this off from the original price to get £3.75.If we bought a 3 litre tin from Wickes (Buy One Get One Free), which cost £8.00, we would have enough paint (1 litre covers 10m²), but it costs more, so we decided that buying paint from B & Q was the best option.

At first the problem seemed simple enough but it was much harder than we thought.  We had to read the question carefully, look for key words and calculations and apply our knowledge of shape, fractions, decimals and percentages to the problem before we could solve it.

Finally, some groups got to present their findings to the class. Here are some of the comments on what the thought of the experience…

‘Extraordinary and Amazing’ –Chloe

‘Fun’ – Sophia

‘Epic’ – Aeryn

‘Awesome’ – Ellen  

‘Challenging’ – Ryan

‘Enjoyable’-Matthew

‘Interesting’ – Ross

‘Helpful’- Iola

By Ellen and Iola