HAY RIVER - Reanna Cross concisely summed up the reaction of many people upon seeing a million beads strung around a Hay River track last week.

"It's a lot of beads," said the Grade 6 student from Princess Alexandra School.

The so-called 'Million Project' was an initiative of South Slave schools to show in a concrete way what a million really means.

Reanna said she now has a better idea of what a million is after seeing the string of beads laid out around the track at Diamond Jenness Secondary School on May 24.

"I didn't realize that it was like 16 times around the track," she said.

The string of beads stretched more than six kilometres, and will be submitted as a possible world record.

The project was the brainchild of Cathy Canavan-McGrath, the numeracy co-ordinator with the South Slave Divisional Education Council (SSDEC).

She said it was "very powerful" to see the beads circling the track.

Canavan-McGrath explained the project was designed to give students a better understanding of a million.

"Our kids work with large numbers, as well as small numbers, and nobody had ever presented kids with a concrete example of what a million is," she said. "This is that opportunity to do so."

Canavan-McGrath noted people develop a deep sense of a number by seeing or handling something in that amount - a dozen eggs or 10 fingers, for example.

"But people don't have a deep sense of large numbers because we don't handle it very often," she said.

Large numbers thereby become abstract and symbolic, she added. "This helps to bring it back into the concrete."

Geoff Buerger, principal of Princess Alexandra School in Hay River, described the initiative as a solid learning project to help students understand the concept of place value - the mathematical system based on 10.

"Many students have difficulty in mathematics because of its abstract nature, but here's an example of the abstract made concrete," he said as he walked around the track.

Buerger said he also liked the fact the project involved many people working together, including students, parents and volunteers.

"How many projects have all that?" he said. "So I think this has been a tremendous achievement on Miss Canavan-McGrath's part because she has been from the start the driving force."

The string of one million beads may result in a Guinness World Record for South Slave schools.

The number of beads was verified in order to challenge the world record for a string of beads - currently standing at a little more than 1.7 km.

The South Slave string of beads measured exactly 6,438.6 metres or 6.4 km.

"We are putting a package together to send to Guinness," said Canavan-McGrath. "There are two options when you apply for Guinness. You can pay for one of their representatives to come up to verify on site or you can put together a package that has verification on it. So that's why

we have witnesses for it."

The witnesses were a representative of the Department of Education, Culture and Employment, along with an RCMP officer.

The information package for Guinness will also include photos taken as the string of beads was created at SSDEC schools in Hay River, Fort Smith, Fort Resolution, the Hay River Reserve and Lutsel K'e.

That involved nearly 10 months of sorting, counting, stringing and tying by students, teachers, parents and staff members.

Canavan-McGrath verified the number of beads as they were being put together in the various schools.

"I had a standard measure for 100 and used that to confirm measures for all of the length of hundreds," she said, noting that means she measured 10,000 hundreds.

"I have to stand by it," she said. "I know that there are a million beads on the track."

After being displayed in Hay River, the 270-kilogram string of beads will visit schools in Fort Resolution, Fort Smith and Lutsel K'e.

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