Top 10 division word problems to help your child practice mathematics!

Word problems are a great way to solidify learning! Whether you’re a parent wanting to help your child practice their division at home, or you’re a teacher looking for an extra challenge in the classroom, word problems are fantastic for helping math skills sink in!

One of the reasons word problems are so effective is that they have a story that a child can imagine. This makes learning more engaging and more meaningful.

We’ve curated a list of 10 awesome word problems for division! They are ordered from easiest to hardest.

You can give them to your children as a one-off challenge, or use them as inspiration to make your own.

When making your own word problems, remember:

• Relate them to your kid’s interests (e.g. sport, baking, a future career)
• Make the questions relevant to topics they already know or are studying
• Include their names or the names of their friends!
• Don’t make them too tricky to read - the reading difficulty needs to match the maths difficulty
• Don’t focus on too many of the same thing (e.g. don’t just ask problems about buying things or food)

The most important thing about mathematics is making it fun! Here are our top 10 division word problems. All the answers and explanations can be found at the bottom of the page.

Before we get into the 10 awesome word problems, another great way to solidify your child’s division ability is through low-pressure practice! Try Polymath today to help build the foundations of your child’s math learning.

10 division word problems

1. You’ve been asked to go to the supermarket to buy as much bread as you can. You’ve been given $10. Each loaf of bread costs $2. How much bread can you buy?
2. An artist needs to put 48 brushes away in their studio. They put the brushes away in pots, each pot has 6 brushes. How many pots do they need?
3. In the forest there are 9 magical cats. One third of the cats are brown, one third of the cats are yellow, and one third of the cats are blue. How many cats are blue?
4. You’re organising a party for 16 people (including you!). You are ordering 4 pizzas. Each pizza has 8 slices. How many slices of pizza does each person get?
5. You need to set up tables and chairs for 64 people. Each table has 8 seats and there should be no incomplete tables. How many tables do you set up?
6. An architect is planning a building for 1,000 people. She worked out she can put 100 people on each floor. How many floors does she need to make?
7. A new car park is going to need 39 parking spaces. Each row can have 4 parking spaces, how many rows will the car park need?
8. A marine biologist has 82 samples of sea water from different locations! Their sample case holds 26 samples in each tray. How many trays will they need?
9. An athlete has to run 4000 metres but their track is only 500 metres long. How many times do they have to run the track to finish 4000 metres?
10. An astronaut is building a rocket to go and live on the moon. The moon is 400,000km away. One litre of rocket fuel can send them 200km. How many litres of rocket fuel do they need?

Answers

1. 5 loaves of bread. Divide $10 by $2 per loaf. 10 ÷ 2 = 5.
2. 8 brush pots. Divide 48 brushes by 6 brushes per pot. 48 ÷ 6 = 8.
3. 3 cats are blue. This question adds a little more information than is necessary, which your child needs to work out first. Find one third of 9, i.e. divide 9 by 3. 9 ÷ 3 = 3.
4. 2 slices of pizza. This requires a multiplication first to find out how many slices there are altogether - 4 pizzas by 8 slices. 4 × 8 = 32. Then divide 32 slices by 16 people. 32 ÷ 16 = 2.
5. 8 tables. Divide 64 tables by 8 chairs per table. 64 ÷ 8 = 8. (64 is the square of 8!)
6. 10 floors. Divide 1,000 people by 100 people per floor. These are bigger numbers, but to divide by 10 or 100, we can “keep knocking the zeroes off”. So we start with 1,000 ÷ 100. Then we take one zero of each number: 100 ÷ 10. Then we take another zero off: 10 ÷ 1 = 10.
7. 10 rows. Divide 39 spaces by 4 spaces per row and round up. This is tricky because 4 doesn’t go evenly into 39, so there is going to be a remainder. 39 ÷ 4 = 9 remainder 3. Round up to 10.
8. 4 trays. Divide 82 samples by 25 and round up. This is tricky because there is a remainder and dividing by 25 is hard! The easiest way to do this is to successively add 25 until we get a number bigger than 25. 1 tray: 25, 2 trays: 50, 3 trays: 75, 4 trays: 100. 3 trays (75) is not enough, but 4 trays (100) is.
9. 8 runs around the track. Understanding the question in the first place might be difficult here. Your child needs to get that the athlete can keep running around the same track to run further and further in total. We could divide 4,000 by 500, or we could successively add 500 until we get to 4,000. 4,000 ÷ 500 is the same as 40 ÷ 5 = 8.
10. 2,000 litres of rocket fuel. These are some big numbers! If your child is having trouble, make sure they can read the numbers (400,000km is four hundred thousand kilometres). Then divide 400,000km by 200km per litre. 400,000 ÷ 200 is the same as 4,000 ÷ 2 = 2,000.