MoMath Online: Student Sessions

Monday, January 25 to Friday, January 29

Click here for next week’s schedule.

Whether your child is already passionate about mathematics or just starting to explore its wonders, MoMath Online: Student Sessions will expose your child to cool areas of mathematics not covered in school and stoke the flames for a lifelong appreciation of mathematics.

Each session is 45 minutes.

Pricing:  Winter Special!  For a limited time only, all Student Sessions are offered at the reduced price of $15, with a special member price of $5.  Not a member?  Join today!  Classes marked “free*” are offered to everyone at no cost, while free spots in every class have been set aside for families with financial need.  Simply register early for these limited spots.  

All times listed below are in Eastern Time (New York).
Please click on a time to register.

Grades Online Session Mon 1/25 Tue 1/26 Wed 1/27 Thu 1/28 Fri 1/29
pre-K – 2 Shape Shifters 10:00 am (free*) 5:30 pm 11:15 am
K – 3 Discovering Polyominoes 10:00 am (free*) 5:30 pm 1:30 pm
1 – 3 Prime Time (new) 5:30 pm 12:00 pm (free*) 4:00 pm
1 – 4 Ghostly Graphs 11:15 am 3:00 pm (free*)
2 – 4 Perplexing Partitions (new) 3:00 pm (free*) 9:00 am 2:00 pm
2 – 4 Magic Squares 1:30 pm 10:00 am 5:30 pm (free*)
2 – 5 Points and Shapes 5:30 pm (free*) 3:00 pm 10:00 am
2 – 6 Exhibit Explorations       
3 – 6 Color Grids (new) 3:00 pm 4:00 pm 12:00 pm
3 – 6 Math in the Corner Pocket 3:00 pm 10:00 am (free*)
3 – 6 Möbius Madness 3:00 pm 11:15 am (free*)
3 – 6 Secrets of Cryptography 5:30 pm 1:30 pm
4 – 8 Making Math Solid                   Making an Octahedron 

12:30 pm (free*)

4 – 8 Poltergeist Paths 1:30 pm
5 – 8 Breaking Codes 12:00 pm 9:00 am (free*)
5 – 8 Crazy Dice 4:15 pm (free*)
5 – 8 Rep-tiles 1:30 pm 4:15 pm (free*)
5 – 8 Win like a Mathematician
6 – 10 Chessboards and Dominoes
7 – 12 Evening the Odds 4:15 pm (free*)
7 – 12 Topological Tic-Tac-Toe 3:00 pm (free*)
9 – 12 Puzzle Sensations 3:00 pm
Free* sessions are free for everyone.
Free spots in every class have been set aside for families facing significant financial hardship; sign up early!  Please prioritize these limited spots for families in need.

Daily Sessions

Sessions are available for grades pre-K through 12, as indicated above.

After you register for your 45-minute session, you will be sent a link and instructions so you can join the fun via Zoom, the free video conferencing platform.  Multiple family members may participate in a session, but please limit the link to one device, as there is a limit on devices.

Session Themes

Our online education sessions offer several inspiring mathematical themes for grades pre-K through 12.

Shape Shifters (grades pre-K through 2): Shapes are all around us, and form the basic building blocks of modern life.  Using squares, rectangles, rhombi, trapezoids, and hexagons, students will discover how shapes are different from one another and how mathematicians identify and name them.  Interactive activities and games will teach students about geometrical symmetries and how to construct polygons with many sides, including the tetracontakaihexagon!  Materials needed: a printout to be provided and scissors (to cut out shapes prior to session).

Discovering Polyominoes (grades K through 3): You’ve heard of dominoes, but have you ever heard of trominoes, tetrominoes, or pentonimoes?  Discover the many surprising shapes you can create simply by combining single-size squares.  Explore various types of symmetry using these unique objects.  Warning: Solving polyomino puzzles may provide hours of fun!  Materials needed: a printout to be provided, pencil, marker, and scissors.  Optional materials: tape.

Prime Time (grades 1 through 3): Prime numbers are the building blocks of arithmetic, and they show up in all sorts of surprising places.  From strange clocks to many-pointed stars, primes can teach us about number relationships and patterns.  Explore primes while using skip counting to create geometric patterns and learn the origin of these very special numbers!  Materials needed: Paper, pencil, and printouts to be provided.  Optional materials: markers.

Ghostly Graphs (grades 1 through 4): Learn the basics of graph theory by counting the ways a small ghost can pass through the walls of a given house.  Discover which is more important: the number of walls, the number of rooms, or the overall layout.  Explore these questions, as well as starting and ending positions, different types of paths, and other intriguing questions.  Have fun in a unique and accessible introduction to this sophisticated branch of mathematics!  Materials needed: pencil, paper, and markers (4 colors).

Perplexing Partitions (grades 2 through 4): How do you regroup the numbers on a grid and still keep the sums the same?  Through clever counting and rearranging, discover how to build the same number with fewer and fewer units and learn to solve a unique family of addition puzzles.  Materials needed: pencil, graph paper (printout to be provided). 

Magic Squares (grades 2 through 4): Magic squares are a set of puzzles that have long fascinated many of the world’s most brilliant thinkers.  Dating back over 4000 years to ancient China, on a magic square, the sums of each column, row, and diagonal are always “magically” the same number!  Discover surprising strategies to solve these mysterious puzzles and learn how to create your very own magic square.  Materials needed: pencil and paper.

Color Grids (grades 3 through 6): In this workshop, students create cool color patterns using simple rules.  Each pattern is created by following a recipe, and you will try different recipes to discover new patterns.  Explore simple cellular automata by generating your own infinite patterns!  Materials needed: Colored pencils/markers (2 colors), graph paper, and a printout to be provided. 

Math in the Corner Pocket (grades 3 through 6): Explore angles and the law of reflection while tracing the path of a billiard ball as it bounces off the walls of a pool table.  Use patterns to discover a simple method to predict in which pocket the ball will land and learn how to prove your prediction is correct.  Game on!  Materials needed: pencil, ruler, graph paper (printout to be provided).

Points and Shapes (grades 2 through 5): Is there an easy way to find the area of geometric shapes?  The answer lies in the geoboard, a square grid used to explore polygons.  Starting with rectangles and triangles and quickly advancing to polygons of any size and shape, explore this fun and unconventional way to calculate area.  Come discover the curious relationship between interiors and boundaries in shapes you design yourself!  Materials needed: pencil and graph paper.

Exhibit Explorations (grades 2 through 6): The interactive exhibits at the National Museum of Mathematics offer visitors a wonderfully accessible introduction to sophisticated math topics not often found in school.  In this series, students will be able to experience an exhibit virtually, as well as participate in a hands-on activity designed to illustrate the principles behind the exhibit.  Each session features a specific exhibit and includes an exhibit video, discussion, and activity.  Come take a look at actual MoMath exhibits such as Math Square, Pythagorean Puzzlers, Hyper Hyperboloid, and more!  Materials needed are typically school supplies, such as paper, pencil, markers, ruler, or scissors, and will be listed in the confirmation email.

Möbius Madness (grades 3 through 6): Students construct fascinating topological objects such as Möbius bands, discovering their fundamental patterns and structures.  Hands-on activities lead students to discover the surprising properties hidden around every twist and turn!  Materials needed: 4 strips of paper (2 inches by 11 inches), scissors, tape, and markers (2 colors).

Secrets of Cryptography (grades 3 through 6): Explore cryptography, secret codes, and ciphers!  Students are introduced to the substitution cipher, which hides messages by replacing letters or groups of letters with other letters or groups of letters.  Using patterns and perseverance, learn how to create hidden messages — and how to break secret codes!  Materials needed: paper, pencil, printout to be provided, and scissors.  Optional materials: brad, paper fastener, or pin.

Making Math Solid (grades 4 through 8): Explore geometry and discover the beautiful structure of polyhedra!  Using modular origami techniques that involve folding multiple sheets of paper, students will create their very own polyhedra (e.g., a tetrahedron, a hexahedron, or a decahedron). Different days will focus on different polyhedra, highlighting their fascinating properties.  Materials needed: 6 to 10 sheets of origami paper or 6 to 10 paper squares (6 inches by 6 inches).

Poltergeist Paths (grades 4 through 8): Dig into graph theory by exploring the connection between vertices and edges and the walls of a haunted house.  Discover a method to find out if a ghost can haunt a castle or if a figure can be drawn without lifting the pen.  Explore how these two problems are related and what they have to do with bridges in 18th-century Prussia!  Have fun in a unique and accessible introduction to this sophisticated branch of mathematics.  Materials needed: pencil, paper, and markers (4 colors).

Breaking Codes (grades 5 through 8): How do computers keep our passwords secret?  Explore multiplicative ciphers, broken codes, and prime numbers, while encoding and decoding your own secret messages.  Learn how cryptography helps protect our private information.  Qojismo islofbocgobe!  Materials needed: paper and pencil.  Optional materials: calculator.

Crazy Dice (grades 5 through 8): Once students find the probability of rolling a given sum with a pair of standard dice, they are challenged with finding a different way to number their dice to get the same probabilities.  Crazy!  Materials needed: sheet of paper and pencil.

Rep-tiles (grades 5 through 8): Come discover mathematical rep-tiles, geometric shapes that can tile into repetitions of themselves.  Learn about areas, scaling, and mathematical proofs, while solving fun rep-tiles puzzles!  Materials needed: pencil, paper, printouts to be provided, and scissors (to cut out shapes prior to session).

Win like a Mathematician (grades 5 through 8): Games are not only fun to play, but fun to solve!  Mathematicians have invented many games that present challenging math problems, some of which are still unsolved.  Join MoMath’s education team online to learn, play, and analyze a variety of mathematical strategy games.  Different days focus on different games, including classics such as Tic-Tac-Toe, Nim, and Hex, as well as a few mystery-guest games!  Materials needed for the games are minimal and will be listed in the confirmation email.

Chessboards and Dominoes (grades 6 through 10): What shapes can you fit together to cover a chessboard?  Dominoes?  Trominoes?  Learn about mathematical proofs while exploring patterns of odd and even numbers and experimenting with real dominoes and chessboards.  This challenging session is for students who love math and are ready for perplexing puzzles!  Materials needed: pencil, graph paper (printout to be provided). Optional materials: chessboard, dominoes.

Evening the Odds (grades 7 through 12): The probability of rolling different sums with a standard pair of dice depends upon the sum in question.  This activity guides students to find ways to renumber their dice so every sum appears with the same probability.  But then, what sums are possible to fit into this scheme?  How many different sums can be rolled with equal likelihood?  The answers to these questions and more are found in this activity.  Materials needed: sheet of paper and pencil.

Topological Tic-Tac-Toe (grades 7 through 12): The familiar game of tic-tac-toe becomes fun and challenging when we play it on alternative topological surfaces.  The typical 3×3 game board is enhanced by gluing pairs of opposite edges together in various ways, making for more interesting games and mind-bending playing spaces.  Students will learn to appreciate the ins and outs of these new objects as they develop strategies to master the mathematically enhanced games.  Materials needed: sheet of paper and pencil.

Puzzle Sensations (grades 9 through 12): Explore mathematical puzzles that grabbed the headlines!  Learn to solve spectacular and controversial puzzles using logic, probability, and basic graph theory.  Develop puzzle-solving strategies while diving into these news-making mathematical conundrums.  Materials needed: pencil and paper.

Registration Fees

Registration fees are pay-if-you-can per session.  Please note that sessions of the same name are repeated sessions, not continuations of earlier sessions.

To give the gift of math, visit mathgift.momath.org for gift registrations for MoMath Online: Student Sessions.

Session Policies

Strictly no refunds, no credits, and no transfers will be permitted.  Spots are limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis.

Be sure to read all MoMath Online: Student Sessions Policies prior to registration.