The Four Color Problem

While reading The Elephant in the Classroom, I came across an interesting problem called "The Four Color Problem".

In the 1850's an Englishman named Francis Guthrie was put in charge of making a map of England and all its counties. He came up with a solution that you only need 4 colors to color a map so that there are no adjacent areas with the same color.

I gave this problem to my third and fourth graders last year, and they solved in in 10 minutes. I should have made more parts to it.

This year I tried the same activity (I am going to make some more) to see if they could do it.

It was fun to watch them puzzle over it at first, and then run with it when they figured it out.