A new, no-cost math club at Resurrection Catholic School is densely enrolled, much to the surprise of the teachers running it.
Instructional support teacher Jenny Shmidheiser said the club called Crazy 8s turned out to be extremely popular with students because It’s fun, high energy and appeals to kids at all skill levels.
“When (teachers) say ‘fun,’ I take it to mean it’s fun for them,” said fifth-grade student Nikitas G. pointing to the younger students in the gym. “I didn’t know there would be two groups. So, I expected it to be boring.”
Two separate age groups, grades 3-5 and K-2 use the same basic activities, but with more challenging math for the older level. The club offers diverse materials to handle a wide range of abilities even among kids in the same grade.
Turns out, Nikitas changed his mind. “It’s math – geometry and probability, with the dice. But it’s all that in a fun way,” he said.
A geometry lesson began with placing glow sticks on the gym floor to make straight-sided shapes, triangles, rectangles, squares, hexagons. After some crawling, laughing and placing, students together created one large pattern of repeating squares glowing in the dark, open space. Then they changed it to create repeating triangles. On the gym stage, younger students did much the same but with less use of math terminology and concepts.
“I got to keep the glow sticks,” said kindergartner Sam K. He also got to keep the dice in a Bouncy Dice Explosion lesson on probability. Going home with materials makes children like the club even more.
Upcoming lessons include Let’s Get Loud and Toilet Paper Olympics. They will run, jump, throw things, and roll around on the floor as they absorb the principals of math, recreationally.