Teaching children about math doesn’t have to be from exercises out of a textbook.

The Math Literature Connection, a branch of Eastern’s Math Energy group, is out to prove to young kids that math can be fun.

The group, comprised of Eastern students, presented its unique teaching methods to an attentive group of about 130 students Monday night in the Grand Ballroom.

“The Math Literature Connection is a pre-service teaching organization to promote enthusiastic and effective math teaching,” said Becky Bloemer, publicity coordinator and elementary education major with a concentration in math.

Utilizing skits based on children’s books connected to math as well as magic tricks involving number play, the Math Literature Connection also uses a lot of audience participation to teach students in the first through eighth grades about the interesting things that can be done with math, Bloemer said.

“We have some material, and we sometimes make up material,” Bloemer said. Ad-libbing is not uncommon, she said.

The group, comprised of mostly elementary education majors concentrating in math, performed five skits and several other tricks and demonstrations during their presentation.

One skit, based on the book One Hundred Angry Ants, centered around a group of ants in search of food. The ants experimented with dividing their one line of 100 ants into two lines of 50, then four lines of 25, all the way down to 10 lines of 10 ants, hoping to make their march go faster. In the meantime, a rabbit and a squirrel made off with the food before the ants could get to it.

While some skits were done with children in mind, the Math Literature Connection spiced the presentation up with some skits designed especially for college students. One involved a Goldilocks-type story involving a guy named Joe and his three very different girlfriends. Instead of porridge, the girlfriends became the representations of “too hot,” “too cold,” and “just right.”

One of the magic tricks demonstrated involved rolling two dice. Through a series of multiplications and additions, the original numbers on the two dice could be predicted according to the final sum reached through the computations.

Another demonstration had audience members cramming into a 5-by-5 square while others shouted out their estimations of how many students could fit into the square.

Samantha Ganske, a junior elementary education major, participated in that segment.

“It was crowded and hot,” she said. Overall, Ganske said she thought the presentation was a hit.

“It was cute and interesting,” she added. “The participation was great, and it was nice how it involved everyone,” Ganske said.

Laura Carlton, a junior early childhood major, said that she enjoyed the magic tricks. “They were cool to try to figure out,” she said.