Afterschool Math

I mentioned recently that I've been volunteering at C's school, working with a small group of second graders on some advanced math problems once a week. It's a great program called Math Stars, which is through the Public Schools of North Carolina. He also gets a Sunshine Math worksheet to do for homework every week, giving him another opportunity for extra math practice. Sunshine Math is though the Florida Department of Education.

I highly recommend both programs if you're looking for some challenging math problems to work on after school. You can access the worksheets yourself at the links above. Math Stars covers grades 1 through 8, and Sunshine Math covers grades K through 5.

I'm working through the second grade Math Stars worksheets with the group at C's school, and I wanted to share some of the more interesting problems we've worked on so far.

This first problem took much longer than any of the other problems we've done so far.

Every one of the kids struggled with making this circle graph, until I read the commentary for teachers that pointed out that the points on the circle correspond to the numbers (i.e., the red piece of the pie would take up 5 of the points on the circle, the blue 7 points, etc.). I told the kids that adults use computers to draw circle graphs now!

This week, C was completely stumped on this next problem. He never really got it until we discussed it as a group.

I have to say that this one made me stop and think for a bit. It's really a trial-an-error type of problem. I suggested they go through each amount and see if they could make change that's only two coins. It took a while for some. For others, especially those that tried 74 cents early, it didn't take nearly as long.

Here's one more problem from the Sunshine Math page C has for this week:

Sunshine Math usually has problems like this where the kids have to figure out missing numbers using addition and subtraction. There are also usually problems that can be solved with multiplication and division, which set the kids up for the time when they start learning these things in school.

I'm really enjoying working with the kids on this program, especially when we get to discuss how they each approached the problem. There are usually at least two ways to solve it, and so it's good to show the kids that you can use different methods to solve the same problem.

Check these programs out at the links above and let me know what you think!

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