Day 1

So we had the first session today. In the end there were just six of us, as two people have dropped out and a third is busy on some other work for a couple of weeks. This means the group is a little less balanced than it was, with one boy each in years 1 and 5, and the rest all in year 3. It's not ideal, so I hope we get some more recruits soon.

So as you can see by the previous post, today's session was mostly focused on the topic of Infinity, in particular, the story of Hilbert's Hotel, otherwise known as Hotel Infinity. This hotel has an infinite number of rooms, which means that even when it's completely full, by moving people into different rooms we can make space for more visitors - even an infinite number of them!

The animation tells it better than words can, and it was a big success, I'm pleased to say, with the kids clustered around it pressing buttons and laughing like crazy at the end of the day - a nice sight for the head teacher when she came into the room.

The session was topped and tailed by a couple of classic puzzles. We started off, after a brief discussion of Thinking and what it means, with a wonderful Edward De Bono problem: given six identical rectangular blocks, can you arrange them so that each one touches exactly two others? What about exactly three others? (You can also do 4 and 5, although we didn't go that far)

At the end, they've gone away with two additional things to think about: a quick matchstick puzzle and a more difficult infinity puzzle. It'll be interesting to see whether they come back having looked at them.

All in all, I really couldn't have hoped for better. The room is great too, very out of the way and important.

Next week a bit more nonsense.