Press release:

Practice is paying off for math students at North Hill Elementary in Des Moines.

Students at the school finished 1st on the West Coast and 7th in the world for most minutes logged in the Math Mania Bowl.

The Math Mania Bowl is a computer based competition where students play one minute math games in real time. The competition lasted 24 hours and students from around the world participated.

“The students went wild and logged in an incredible amount of minutes online,” said North Hill Principal, Nancy Melius. “The kids were excited to compete against each other, and the rest of the world.”

Many students logged in for 5-6 hours.

Fourth and fifth graders started training for the competition in September when the school started a Math Club through V-Math, an online math program and interactive game. To join the club, students were asked to put in 100 minutes of work each week, on top of their regular weekly homework.

A total of 84 students joined the math club and logged thousands of minutes over the last several months. The program helped students to quickly build up their math skills while working on the different kinds of mathematics such as algebra, probability, geometry, and measurement. All this practice helped the students earn gold in the competition.

“The kids were so excited and proud of their accomplishment,” said Melius. “We hope to continue this educational, fun, and interactive program in the future.”

As a prize, students were award a trophy and a $500 check to go toward their school.