You wouldn’t expect Mandarin Maths to be a subject learnt at primary school level, but that’s exactly what students from year five 5 studied recently.

A group of 18 children from various primary schools attended Camborne Science and International Academy’s Super Saturday workshop to take part in a Magical Mandarin Maths session.

“We started by having some fun, dividing the students into teams and taught them one to ten in Chinese,” said Pauline Fedorchenko, languages teacher at CSIA. “We then asked the group to take part in rap battles using numbers and hand actions for each one. It was like nothing the students had experienced before and it was clear to see what a great time they were having.

“Students even learnt about pinyin which is how we write the Chinese characters in English, followed by flat lines, which shows how the word should be pronounced. It was all very complex but very enjoyable too.”

Children took part in various activities including SPLAT, where a number was spoken in English and three teams had to compete to SPLAT the correct Chinese pinyin board.

“It was incredible to see such young students engaging with both maths and Mandarin and having so much fun in the process,” added Mrs Fedorchenko. “If we can capture their interest and inspire them to get involved at such an early age, it will have a tremendous impact throughout their school lives.”

Participating schools included: Troon, Rosemellin, Trevithick learning Academy, Weeth, Penponds, Portreath, Crowan, and St John’s.

The students also played games on Linguascope which is an educational learning platform for school children to learn languages. “

“Children at this age are absolutely ready to get their pronunciation perfect, their brains are at the right stage for it,” said Mrs Fedorchenko. "They’re less inhibited perhaps than older teenagers are to give it a go with strange sounding words and maybe getting it wrong. We can have loads of fun with them at this age and that’s what we need to do with languages.”

Future Super Saturday workshops include: Geography: Geohunt on November 11; English: Witchcraft and Wizardry on November 25, and Science: Christmas Chemical Mix up on December 2.

Anyone wanting to book a place should go to cambornescience.co.uk/super-saturdays or email supersaturdays@cambornescience.co.uk.