“So now you know that math can be fun, too.”

That was the comment made by one parent to a child on a recent Friday night during the first ever "Math Night for the Community – Around the World Activities" hosted by students in the Foundations of Math class at Northampton Community College's Monroe Campus. More than 50 people attended this free event planned by future elementary and early childhood teachers who are learning new ways to teach math to their future students.

Each child was given a passport upon entering and then traveled to six different stations to learn about games, activities and projects they could do at home.

The first table featured games from Kenya, Hawaii and Native Americans. These games teach students how to add by counting either dots or patterns. They were expanded to include multiplying, subtracting and dividing for the older students. Each of the games was made by the students in the class.

Lu-Lu is the Hawaiian counting game, played with four disks that could easily be replicated at home. Each disk is divided into four equal sections and dots are placed in the sections. The disk has a value of one, two, three, and four depending on the number of dots on it. One side of the disk is blank. Students then throw the disks in the air and count the dots after they land. After a set time, the person with the highest score wins.

The second station featured designs from both Japan and the Amish culture. Students created quilts using a variety of shapes and patterns and snowflakes cut out of coffee filters. It was a sticky situation at that table, and the children really concentrated hard on making intricate patterns.

The next stop featured repeating patterns and tessellations. Here children learned about space, shape and measurements from Japan and Arabic nations. There were pages to color, geoboards to make patterns with and also graph paper and canning lids. Concentration levels were high here!

The next stop was a little messy, but included the one material all children love – sand!!! Children of all ages could draw patterns in the sand with designs from India and then take home the patterns to draw on paper. They also got to play with geometry figures, filling in pre-made charts with different images with squares, circles, rectangles, triangles, rhombuses and more.

At the last station, NCC's own Dr. Beatriz Villar, assistant professor of biology, made origami jumping frogs and cranes for the youngsters. Origami is the ancient Japanese art of paper folding. Dr. Villar's fingers were sore by the end of the night, but the children were lined up waiting for their very own paper creations. There were more intricate designs on display as well. Also here were wooden puzzles made in Indonesia. Several people conquered the puzzles earning their own puzzle to take home, but only one lucky person put together the square cube earning a $5 gift card to Dunkin Donuts as well.

At the end of their tour of the world, the children were led to the prize bucket where they could seek out the best goodies for themselves. They also received bags from the sheriff of Monroe County with small metal puzzles and pencils to remind them that math can always be fun.

Be sure to not miss next year's Math Night when the theme will be ……… Stay tuned!