by Delphine Michaud, Lower School Director

Math Club is in full swing!

Beginning in January, a large group of Second and Third Grade students started spending their Tuesday afternoon recesses playing with numbers and stretching their quantitative thinking skills at ISB’s Math Club!  Math Club is a time for students to have fun using numbers, computational skills, and strategy in a game context. Students bring their lunches and learn the game of the day, eating and playing for the next hour. They arrive with great excitement, thriving on the challenges that the Math Club games present. Their concentration is palpable as kids work together to solve complex problems using concepts they cover in more traditional contexts in the classroom. Sounds of confusion become sounds of excitement as students work through the games and solve problems that may have appeared “impossible” to them at the outset. Students of all levels of ability and degrees of math-affection come each week to play such games as:

Race to 100: Students create double-digit addition problems with a set of numbers, trying to get closest to 100, above 100, or below 100 and winning as many rounds as possible.  This game requires strategic thinking, place value skills, addition, subtraction, and more.

Number Bubbles: Students have to use a set of numbers once each to fill in bubbles to add to a given total. Students exercise addition skills, strategizing, and trial and error.  Students attempt bubble challenges with 4 to 9 bubbles.

Math Club is an exciting weekly activity that students are encouraged to join on an ongoing basis. We hope that even more students will join the f(u)=n!