happy life: "All-Star Mathlete"

In early February, all the 6th graders in ALP Math (advanced) worked on a tough word-problems packet, and the top six scorers from each elementary school qualified to go to the All-Star Mathletes district competition!

Well, Noah has always been pretty good at math and he qualified. The team, along with their ALP math teacher, took a van to a Junior High in the district and the competition lasted all afternoon. The girls and I went to watch... good thing they had their homework to do and I had my phone to play on because most of it was truly NOT a spectator sport!

There were a few different exercises; some individual and some as a team. First they did "mental math," where the announcer said a series of calculations like, "Start with 4. Multiply by 6. Add 9. Divide by 3. Add 40. Subtract 17. Divide by 2. Multiply by 3. Add 9. Divide by 5. What's the result?" There were 25 problems like this, to be done in their heads (no paper, and obviously no calculators) and they just wrote down the answer at the end of each problem. They might have been longer (more steps) than this; I don't know. So that was mental math.

The other individual thing was working on a big packet of word problems, similar to the packet they completed to qualify for the competition. I think they had 45 minutes to work on it and it was so quiet in the room during that time, you could hear a pin drop. That was the individual problem solving portion. (I took these pictures during a break.)

After a snack break they did some team exercises. Well, this one was really individual... playing "24." Their teacher put out these cards, one by one, each with four numbers on it. The first kid to figure out how those four numbers can equal 24 - using each number once - gets the points for that card. For example, the card they're looking at here has the numbers 3, 4, 6, and 8. I just figured out that you can make 24 by going (8-6)x3x4=24. The cards have different point values based on difficulty.

I love this picture -- I can hardly ever get him to give me a good smile and this picture looks like he's really enjoying himself (doing math).

Here's the room full of kids; each school's team at their own table. This was actually only half the elementary schools in the district; the rest had their competition a different day.

After playing "24" with their classmates they divided up into mixed teams (with kids from other schools) to do some other team exercises.

Then it was time for awards.... drumroll please....

Noah's mixed team got all of their team problems correct!

Noah got the highest number of points from his school team playing "24!"

Noah TIED FOR FIRST place for the Mental Math portion... he and this girl each missed only two problems out of the 25, and they had to order another trophy for him!

I was so excited about that moment of him winning the mental math; I sat back down and put my camera away. But then they announced the winner of the individual problem-solving portion, and NOAH WON THAT ONE TOO!!!