AtoZ Blogging Challenge – Math Madness

Program Name: Math Madness

What: This is a hands-on learning program about math for kids in elementary school. We have found that the kids continue to try and show off they math knowledge, but have very few skills that we would consider math basics. They can name a tetrahedron, but don’t know how to read a ruler. We’re trying to bring math skills you learn in the classroom and make them fun and accessible in the real world.

Where: This program can be offered in whatever space you have available – we’ve used our storytime room with it’s stadium style bleacher seats to a small meeting room and have even used a larger space as needed.

When: We offer this program every other month – opposite our Passport Pals program. You could offer this as a weekly series, a monthly series or quarterly – whatever fits into your schedule.

Who: We gear this program to 3-5 grades students, but again you could easily adapt this to a younger audience or an older audience and just change the activities to fit the developmental levels of those audience.

How: Our children’s librarian uses library blogs and Pinterest to come up with great ideas for simple, easy activities that don’t cost a lot of money surrounding a specific topic. With STEM being a huge buzzword right now, these types of activities are easy to come by!

Alternatives:

• If you’re low on time, check out the possibility of using Crazy 8s Math Club, created by Bedtime Math. We started out using the program, but the parameters didn’t work well for our schedule, so we started creating our own “lessons”.
• If you’re short on staff, see if you have a high school student willing to volunteer some time to offer a few programs for you – it looks good on college applications and helps you out in theprocess!

During the month of April, I’ll be participating in the 2018 Blogging from A to Z Challenge. For this year’s theme, I’ll be offering you a library program plan with everything you to need to re-create it at your own library. Most of these programs we’ve offered in the past, others are programs I’d like to try in the future. I’m always looking for new inspiration and I thought you might be too!