Waterford Institute of Technology’s STEM engagement centre, Calmast, is delivering online home-learning maths activities for kids and parents to have fun together while learning at home.
WIT’s Calmast Activities: What You Will Learn
Eoin Gill, director of Calmast and a co-founder of Maths Week Ireland says: “Many people are tasked with keeping children busy, entertained and hopefully learning at home during this difficult time. In order to support families, we present a new activity every morning suitable for pre-school and primary where children can make something exciting using materials commonly available in the home.”
An example of this activity is where they brought art and maths together in a simple activity to learn about symmetry by making a picture of a butterfly. Calmast also has materials for secondary schools and challenges for adults. These activities are being posted on social media daily.
Find Activities to Suit Your Family
All of the activities can be found on the Maths Week website and by following @mathsweek on Facebook and Twitter you will see the daily activities.
- 8am Targetboards open on www.mathsweek.ie closing 8 pm. This is a great activity for primary school pupils to practice maths- they must find the greatest number of ways possible to make a target number using a given set of numbers. Can be done as an individual or a whole class can work together if the teacher registers.
- 9am Activity of the Day – maths learning activity that can be run by parents in the home
- 12pm Daily Maths Challenge on social media
- 1pm & 1:30pm Make up 24 with new Licence Plates each day
- 5pm Resource of the day – article or website review
- In addition the Calmast team is issuing a weekly newsletter to over 8,000 subscribers – read this week’s online here.
After Easter, Calmast plans to start similar activity in Science, Technology and Engineering.
Background
Calmast WIT’s STEM Engagement Hub based is based in the School of Lifelong Learning and Education. Calmast leverages the resources of WIT (in particular the staff and students and venues) and works in partnership with schools, industry and business, local authorities, public bodies and non-governmental organisations to promote STEM. Calmast has been funded by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) as the STEM Hub for the South East Region.
Maths Week Ireland is a partnership of over 50 groups across the island of Ireland to promote Maths and its applications. It is the biggest Maths Week in the world engaging over 400,000 in 2019. It is supported by Waterford Institute of Technology, the Department of Education and Skills, Northern Ireland’s Department for the Economy, Science Foundation Ireland and business. It was established and is coordinated by Calmast, Waterford Institute of Technology’s STEM Engagement centre.
