Question: Ani is making bouquets of lilies, daisies, and ferns. For every two lilies, she wants to use five daisies and four stems of ferns. If she has twenty-seven daisies, twenty-five ferns, and twelve lilies, how many bouquets can she make? How many lilies, daisies, and ferns will she have left over?
Start by setting up boxes to represent the proportion: 2 lilies, 5 daisies, and 4 ferns.
To use all 12 lilies, Ani will need to make six bouquets.
However, we encounter a problem when we apply this proportion to the daisies.
She would need thirty daisies to make six bouquets. She’s only got twenty-seven, so we need to go back a step and start again, this time making only five bouquets.
That will mean she has two left over lilies, but when we fill in our diagram with 5’s, we can see she’ll have enough daisies and enough ferns.
Some quick subtraction to show how many of each flower are left over…
So if Ani makes five bouquets, she will have two lilies left over, two daisies, and five ferns.