Math Carnival

The UIUC Mathematics Department put on a little Math Carnival for elementary-aged kids this weekend. Alice and Robert are on a math kick right now, so I thought they'd enjoy it. Turns out it was a very loud, crowded event and it was difficult to participate in most of the activities. James and Matthew were bored out of their minds most of the time, too.

But (and this is a big but) Robert got to see math a little differently. He played tangram puzzles, built a structure with magnatiles, and folded an almost complete set of platonic solids (missing the icosahedron). He turned to Bobby and asked, "What does any of this have to do with math?!"

Alice had fun, too, hanging out a long while at the riddles table (getting lion-goat-grain across the river one at a time without allowing any to eat the other), tangrams, making a few platonic solids of her own, and gathering the courage to ask what they were building in their 3-D printer.

James played Connect Four.

Matthew threw colorful balls into boxes labeled with prime numbers and enjoyed a couple flights of stairs.

Bobby and I pretty much wanted to leave as soon as we got there. If we do this again, I will leave the smallest of the small ones at home, arrive the moment it starts, and zip through all the interesting bits before things get too crazy. There were activities there for a wide range of math levels. We could have spent half an hour at each table, honestly, with how much was presented there.

Robert's tangram creation

Matthew and Robert getting into the magnatiles