Golden Key Enrichment

How do you move an entire tower of disks without ever placing a larger disk on a smaller one? How do you get everyone safely across a river when there are rules about who can travel together? And how many different ways can something be arranged?
In our Johnson level classes, our 3rd–5th graders encounter classic puzzles and problems such as the Tower of Hanoi puzzle, river-crossing puzzles, and knights and knaves logic puzzles - problems that have fascinated mathematicians and puzzle lovers for generations.
At this level, competition math also becomes a bigger part of our curriculum, and students learn to tackle problems that require creativity, strategy, and grit rather than simply applying a procedure they already know.

Your five year old may be able to recite the numbers from 1 to 100, but do they really understand what those numbers represent? Knowing how to count and having a strong number sense are different things. In our Math Pythagoras program (PreK–K), we build number sense through games and hands-on activities: children count and recognize quantities, connect them to written numerals, compare amounts, and begin to see how numbers relate to one another. Strong number sense now builds the foundation for the arithmetic and problem solving that come later.

As children grow, math becomes more formal, but it doesn’t need to become less fun! In the Gauss program (grades 2-3), students tackle increasingly challenging problems, develop their logical and spatial reasoning, and begin learning the precise language and definitions mathematicians use every day.
With that, our students will still investigate a geometry concept with shapes in their hands, lay out pentominos to solve a puzzle, or take out scissors and origami paper to figure out a spatial reasoning challenge.
We’re building skills for increasingly advanced mathematics while making sure children still experience that wonderful “I got it!” moment along the way.

We do quite a bit with pentominoes in classes and in camp, but these puzzles never get old! And, as it turns out, finding all the pentominoes is a fun activity for six year olds and nine year olds alike.