1+1=fun for mathematics students

Despite sporadic stints of agonizing grimaces while his chin rested on the desk, Gruneil Dhaliwal figured it was easier than he might have made it look.
“I’m good at math, I thought this would be a challenge,” the Grade 5 student at Balmoral middle-school said, just 26 minutes after completing his test at the Math Kangaroo. “It’s actually very exciting, I always get 100 per cent on my tests, it is fun going to Kumon and I just enjoy it.”
Kumon, an after-school program designed to bolster a student’s math and literacy skills through repetition and increased problem solving familiarity, has done a lot to bolster Dhaliwal’s skills, his father Hardeep said, adding the subject was a strong point for him as a youth as well.
“You can do a lot with math,” he said.
In its second year, the Math Kangaroo, hosted by Mount Royal College yesterday afternoon, grew by 21 participants to 122 students from Grades 3 through 12, said college math instructor Mariya Svishchuk, who thinks tinkering with numbers often takes a back seat to other extra-curricular activities in a given school’s curriculum.
“This is not high level, boring mathematics,” she said. “We’ve added fun questions, very funny questions, and we’re trying to develop their taste for mathematics, to wake them up,” she said.