The British School In The Netherlands

This month JSV hosted the annual Maths Quest competition for Year 6 children.  JSV has been attending this competition for 6 years and this year it was our turn to host!  Maths Quest is an international event with schools from all over the world sending a team of 4 children to participate in the competition.  This year a total of 17 schools took part, including JSD and JSV, with some schools coming from as far away as California or Malaysia!  In total 80 children and 35 adults were involved in the competition.

Friday 8^th May was the first day of the competition which saw the children taking part in the Maths Trail, a walk around Den Haag city centre answering maths questions along the way.  This was followed by lunch at a pancake house in Scheveningen and a trip to Madurodam, to show our guests a little bit of the Netherlands.

Saturday and Sunday saw all the children at JSV completing various rounds of the competition, solving a variety of mathematical problems, some of which were pretty challenging!  Throughout the competition the focus was on team work and having fun.  There was even a fun construction challenge where teams had to build a boat out of card to carry eggs along the canal.  Saturday evening also saw the children letting their hair down and forging international friendships at a disco complete with pizza.   

The visiting children were hosted by families from JSV and we would like to say another massive thank you to all those families who hosted Maths Quest participants this year. 

Vienna International School were the overall winners of the competition followed by The International School of Oslo, with JSV Team A coming in third place.

The competition was thoroughly enjoyed by all and it was great to see so many mathematical brains getting really excited about maths!

Vera Zuiderwijk
JSV Mathematics Subject Leader