Pi Day Fun

To celebrate Pi Day (3/14) at Saklan, the 8th graders taught a special lesson to the third graders. Students worked together in pairs to measure the diameter and then the circumference of a cookie. They then calculated their own pi by making the ratio of circumference over diameter. No one got exactly 3.14159, but some groups came very close! The students had a group discussion about their results and concluded that two of the reasons they may not have gotten exactly 3.14159 was because the cookies weren’t perfectly round and using a string to calculate circumference might have led to errors.

To close the lesson, the pairs made memory mnemonics to help them remember the first ten digits of pi. A couple interesting ones were:

Can I have a large tangerine or orange juice now?

3 1 4 1 5 9 2 6 5 3

Groups that had extra time worked on writing a Pi-ku. These are like Haikus, but instead of only three lines with the syllable pattern 5-7-5, they can go on infinitely (or at least 32 lines) and follow the pattern of pi. Here are a couple examples: 

Fun (1)

And exciting (4)

You (1)

Kick a ball and run (5)

Basketball is also very fun (9)

And hard (2)

Running takes a lot of (6)

Hard work and training (5)

#SaklanHandsOn