Math Festivals: Bringing Joy, Confidence, and Community Back Into Math

Daniel Kline, Executive Director, Julia Robinson Math Festival 

When I tell people that I work with math, I often get reactions like “I was never good at math” or “Math was always too hard for me.” For many, math was boring, anxiety-inducing, and the subject that made them feel stupid. As early as 5th grade, most children have already decided that they are not a “math person.”

In our current education system, people learn math in a very narrow way. Math is plugging in numbers for x, memorizing formulas, and regurgitating procedures that are supposed to be important one day. Students learn math individually, using pencil and paper, and with the goal of getting as many right answers as possible. 

But math doesn’t need to be this way. In 2007, Nancy Blachman founded the Julia Robinson Mathematics Festival (JRMF), a nonprofit on a mission to help all children build confidence, joy, and a sense of belonging around math. Nancy started JRMF to provide programming that was non-competitive and focused on engagement rather than performance. At a Math Festival, children with their families explore a variety of hands-on, play-based math puzzles and games at their own pace. Volunteers from the community help lead each activity. The event is open to all ages and backgrounds and is an opportunity for the whole community to come together to celebrate the joy of math.

There are three core components of Math Festivals that set them apart from other math programming:

1. Hands-on Learning – Every JRMF activity incorporates manipulatives, such as pattern blocks, dice, dominoes, and cards, that help children learn math through hands-on play. Manipulatives serve an important role in the learning process by making it easier to undo mistakes, see others’ thinking, and observe patterns and structures that help build problem-solving skills. Hands-on learning also makes math fun, a key component of learning that often gets overlooked. JRMF activities are designed to use manipulatives that are either low-cost or things that teachers already have in the classroom and parents already have at home, making it easy and affordable to replicate hands-on math learning after the event is over.
2. Student Choice –  At a Math Festival, children have the opportunity to choose from 10-20 different activities and spend as much or as little time as they like at each one. This collection of activities is picked to provide attendees with a variety of different experiences, including shape puzzles, number puzzles, two-player games, and body kinesthetic floor activities. Some children hop around to each of the different activities, while others find something that resonates with them and stick with it for hours. Either way, the goal of a Math Festival is to give children an opportunity to find the kind of math that really connects with them and the space to explore it in the way that brings them the most joy.
3. Collaboration – Math Festival activities are designed to be done with a friend. The tactile nature of the activities makes it easy for attendees to see one another’s thinking and work together to build solutions. Puzzles are word-independent, don’t require background knowledge, and can be explored visually, allowing people of different ages, backgrounds, skill levels, and native languages to collaborate together. Parents often play alongside their children, and although Math Festivals are overtly targeted at kids, this kind of event is just as much about giving adults an opportunity to experience hands-on math learning. When facing the world’s problems, we need to be able to work together thoughtfully, communicatively, and creatively with the diverse array of people around us. Math Festivals provide children and adults with the opportunity to build these skills in a joyful yet challenging environment.

During the Math Festival, parents and teachers learn about free resources they can bring back to their homes and classrooms. All of the Math Festival activities can be downloaded online and printed out for free. The hands-on manipulatives that go along with each activity are either things that parents and teachers already have or are low-cost items that can be easily purchased online. 

With each Math Festival, the goal is to not only provide a fun day of mathematical problem solving but also give people the resources they need to replicate hands-on learning in affordable and stress-free ways. The Julia Robinson Mathematics Festival’s main mission is to democratize joyful math so that we can show every child that they are a mathematician.

If you’re interested in helping us spread the joy of math, here are some ways to get started:

1. Print out a free math puzzle for your own children.
2. Visit an upcoming Math Festival.
3. Host a Math Festival for your community.
4. Donate to provide a free Math Festival at a low-income school.

For more information about all things Math Festival-related, visit us at jrmf.org.