Pack the Box

What children learn in Level 2

• Some cubes hide inside the box, so counting only what you can see gives the wrong answer. Let's count the smart way, one layer at a time.
• Here's the bottom layer in orange. It has 3 rows of 4 cubes, so it has 12 cubes.
• Every layer is the same size, because the box goes straight up. This box has 3 layers of 12.
• If a box is only partly full, count what's left. Here, 1 layer is packed, and 2 layers of 12 are still empty, so 24 more cubes will fill it.