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Grade 4, 5 and 6 learners, from different schools which participated in the Standard Bank Siyakha NumberSense Programme, together with education students from the Stellenbosch University broke the world record for building the largest Level 3 Menger Sponge in the fastest time last Friday.
The sponge is made of material that the children use in classrooms, called the GeoGenius Construction Kit.
The world record attempt was part of the NumberSense User Group Conference where participating schools came together to discuss and give feedback on the product while also offering helpful suggestions for future developments.
Founder and head of Brombacher and Associates, an organisation involved in teacher training; material development and research in mathematics, Aarnout Brombacher said he was excited to have been part of this project.
“We have been planning this for years and wanted to do it last year, but realised that we were not ready. Building this giant in just six hours was amazing,” he said,
He added that it took the last person to do it 10 years to complete.
He added that this is fantastic because, like any other big project, there were setbacks right through to the last minute.
“We had built the base of the menger in the office and when we wanted to bring it to the Zietz Mocca Museum on Wednesday, we realised that we could not get it out of the office,” he said.
It was then that Brombacher and his team decided to get somebody to remove the window so that the base could get out of the building.
Grade 4, 5 and 6 learners, from different schools which participated in the Standard Bank Siyakha NumberSense Programme, together with education students from the Stellenbosch University broke the world record for building the largest Level 3 Menger Sponge in the fastest time last Friday.
The sponge is made of material that the children use in classrooms, called the GeoGenius Construction Kit.
The world record attempt was part of the NumberSense User Group Conference where participating schools came together to discuss and give feedback on the product while also offering helpful suggestions for future developments.
Founder and head of Brombacher and Associates, an organisation involved in teacher training; material development and research in mathematics, Aarnout Brombacher said he was excited to have been part of this project.
“We have been planning this for years and wanted to do it last year, but realised that we were not ready. Building this giant in just six hours was amazing,” he said, adding that it took the last person to do it 10 years.
He added that this is fantastic because, like any other big project, there were setbacks right through to the last minute.
“We had built the base of the menger in the office and when we wanted to bring it to the Zietz Mocca Museum on Wednesday, we realised that we could not get it out of the office,” he said.
It was then that Brombacher and his team decided to get somebody to remove the window so that the base could get out of the building.
