Wonder Maths Competition

Arithmetic expert, Samuel K (Year 4) reports from Sandhurst Primary School...

On 23rd May, a team from St Mary’s attended a maths competition day at Sandhurst Primary School.  We arrived by bus (normal I guess) and then spent some time practicing our mental maths skills. When we started it was intense, as everybody was going so fast.  My heart was pounding, but I stayed calm. 

First game with 8 dice: 2 for the number that you are going to make, and 6 for the numbers you are going to make it.  We used pentominoes to make a triangle—not too hard, but still hard.  You had to change one pentomino though.  Sad.  If you were sitting on the two seats behind the table, you did challenges.  Again, hard ones. 

Next game up was one of the most exciting games:  Make 24.  We were given all of the digits 0-9.  Some people could answer a question after 5 to 10 seconds (so quick!).

After that we had cypher text and codes.  We had to break the code to get the sentence, which would reveal a clue to solve the problem.  Three or four hours later, after a lot of hard work and motivation,  it was finally finished.