Kids take math skills on road
Fourth- and fifth-graders from Mullan Trail Elementary School crossed the state line last week to take part in a math competition at a Saturday at Mt. Spokane High School.
The team placed ninth out of 16 teams in its division for the Math is Cool competition. But, like last year, the kids were the only team from Idaho participating, so they can hold claim to the title of top team from the Spud State.
“We tease and say we took first for our state,” said Gale Adams, a remediation and enrichment teacher who coordinates Mullan Trail’s Math is Cool program. “Both years, we were state champions.”
The Math is Cool program is an enrichment and after-school program for fourth- and fifth-graders with a knack for numbers. Kids practice in teams of four to six kids, aiming to make it big at the final competition.
Activities consist of individual tests, team tests, even relays where teams line up and race to get down the line first.
“It was based on your individual strengths as well as your strengths as a team,” Adams said. “A lot of times that’s the challenging part … working together as a team.”
“I think it’s a really good program,” she added.
Others in the Post Falls School District must agree. The program was recently honored as the district’s “Most Innovative Program” for this school year.
Youth awards
Post Falls teens and children will be honored Friday in Q’emiln Park at 6 p.m. during the annual Mayor’s Youth Commission awards banquet.
Individual kids and youth groups will be recognized for their service to the community. Volunteers will donate dinner to the nominees and food will be available for those attending for a small fee.
Mayor Clay Larkin formed the commission in 2001 to encourage kids in Post Falls to volunteer.
Signatures in space
The odds are against students at Mullan Trail visiting space anytime soon, but thanks to a free program sponsored by NASA and Lockheed Martin Corp., students can have their signatures placed aboard a space shuttle and flown into outer space.
The school was selected to participate in the Student Signatures in Space program. The program began in 1997 and has sent the signatures of more than 2.75 million elementary and middle school students into space, according to the Post Falls School District’s Web site.
The school’s students and staff are signing a large poster provided by NASA. The poster will be photographed and the signatures will be sent to space via a computer disk aboard a shuttle mission. The poster will be returned after the mission, along with an official flight certification and a photo of the astronaut crew that carried the disk.
“The goal of the Student Signatures in Space program is to pique students’ interest in space by getting them ‘personally’ involved in a space shuttle mission,” according to the program’s Web site.