Eva Beresova

On March 17 (3+14) we celebrated π.

The pupils of the 4th grade participated in the morning workshops where they played mathematical games and learnt about 3,14 - basic facts by their own experience.

The pupils made coding bracelets. First, they wrote the key - different colours represented different numbers from 1 to 10. Then they coloured worksheets with Pi number digits and started to make their bracelets. They really enjoyed this simple craft, which is also perfect to practise a lot of fine motor work... Some pupils „upgraded“ the activity – they observed odd and even numbers – so their bracelets were made of two colours only.

Graphing is an early math skill, so the easiest way for children to understand that Pi keeps going (and going, and going) is to set up a graph. The children created little works of art – the city skylines where each building represents a number in pi.

Older pupils are, unfortunately, still at home. They explained the Pi number in a more sophisticated way by exploring. They needed only some round base objects of everyday use, a tailor´s measure, a ruler, and a grid for the measurement results. They calculated the approximate value of the magic number...

Side objectives of our workshop were to develop cross-curricular relations: Maths, ICT, Art and Design and English, too (revision of colours/numbers vocabulary), and to make Maths more popular.

******************************************************

This school year (2021/22), we invited a team of students from a neighbouring school to show them the school and told us about the ongoing project “Life is math around us”. We solved puzzles and math crosswords in mixed teams. We competed in the Kahoot Quiz also. Well, and at the end, we had a Pi cake. Pi day activities were carried out by the project team. Due to the ongoing constraints of the Covid-19 pandemic, the number of participants was limited.

We made souvenirs related to Pi day. These were keychains created by students and printed with a 3d printer. The ready-to-print pendant stl file can be found below. We also publish slides and some tasks. 

presentation and tasks.zip

key chain stl.zip

*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*

     At a meeting at an Osmanye private high school, in Turkey, project participants had an extraordinary opportunity to celebrate Pi Day together. It was a great experience to attend International Pi Day. We really liked the idea of making a math game for ourselves and playing it later. It was dominoes. Project participants made domino tiles, painted them, and later played them. For some countries, this was a completely new experience.
The other part was an outdoor game. The school already had a ready pitch for this time game. This is a great team strategy game where you need to count and strategy.

Outdoor game rules:

rules of the game.docx

Students prepared a lot of time in advance to prepare for Pi Day. They prepared interesting colourful posters.

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Another good idea is very much in line with the work style of the project. These are trials and research. On Pi day students of Lekeciai school were invited to make a parachute for an egg. It was a great experiment, it caused a lot of emotion and encouraged many students to explore and try again. The students in groups of 2 -3  produced a parachute from recyclable materials. The winners are those whose parachute lands the fastest and does not break the egg.

All parachutes were released to fall from the school roof.