How to teach binary numbers to kids using a cool math trick?

A fun way to teach decimal to binary conversion to kids

I got an opportunity to teach about computers to 6th-grade kids at Vidyarpana Montessori school in Coimbatore, India. In this article, I will share how I used a cool math trick to teach decimal to binary conversion and vice versa.

I started off with a question “Are computers smart? ” and talked through the first few slides of the presentation I gave earlier to Community Montessori School, Tampa.

You can read more about my computer science workshop at Community Montessori school in this post.

What middle school students need to know about computer science and software engineering job

I explained to them the components of a computer and why computers know only the numbers “0” and “1”.

Let's play the game 🎮

To teach binary, I showed a cool math trick to read the number on anyone’s mind. To play the game, I made a poster with numbers 1 to 30 split into 5 columns like in the below table.