Princess Kiera lives in the magical kingdom of Math Land with her beautiful sister Katelyn. The queen has told the two princesses that they can have a few princess friends over for a slumber party.

Kiera and Katelyn want to give their guests some party treats, and want to be fair. They decide they will invite as many friends as they can, with each friend getting the same amount of treats.The girls decide to lay out all of the treats they have and try and make equal groups of each.

They start with the Marvelous Magic Jelly Beans. There are 24 of those to give out. "How many groups of jelly beans can we make?" asks Katelyn.

"Well," said Kiera, "There are 24 jelly beans, so we can invite 24 friends!"

"That's true, Kiera, but if we invite fewer friends each one can get more treats! What other ways can we group 24?"

Kiera rearranged the jelly beans and made 12 groups of 2. "If we only invite 12 friends, each one can get 2 jelly beans."

"I just noticed something Kiera. So far we have made 24 groups of 1, and 12 groups of 2. I learned in Mr. Lavelle's math class that the numbers you multiply together to get another number are called factors. Maybe we can list all of the factors of 24 to see the different groups of jelly beans we can make."

"Great idea Katelyn."

Kiera and Katelyn's Slumber Party!!!

Kiera and Katelyn listed all the ways they could to multiply two numbers together to get 24.

"1 x 24, 2 x 12, 3 x 8, and 4 x 6 are all of the ways we can multiply two whole numbers to get 24 as a product. So the factors of 24 are: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, and 24."

"Great!" said Kiera, "So we can invite 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, or 24 friends!"

"Wow that's a lot of options. We need to narrow this down a little."

Kiera and Katelyn's Slumber Party!!!

Kiera and Katelyn's Slumber Party!!!

The next treat they had to give out were Lovely Lollipops. They had 18 of them to share.

Using the same grouping process, Kiera and Katelyn quickly figured out the factors of 18.

"1 x 18, 2 x 9, and 3 x 6 all equal 18. So the factors of 18 are 1, 2, 3, 6, 9, and 18," Katelyn determined.

"That's true," said Kiera, "But we want to make sure all of our guests get the same number of treats. How can we do that?"

"By finding the common factors. 24 and 18 both have 1, 2, 3, and 6 in common, so if we invite one of those number of friends we can share the treats evenly!" Katelyn exclaimed.

"Great!" Kiera said. "But we still have the Sweet Spearmint Sticks to share. We have 6 of them."

"Well, the factors of 6 are 1, 2, 3, and 6. These are all common factors of 24 and 18, so any of these would work!"