At Westbourne House School we celebrate Pi Day March 14 or 3/14 - the first three digits of an infinite number with many practical uses.
Across the whole school - nursery to Year 8 - we discuss π, eat pie, calculate π and compete to see who has memorised the most digits of π!
As pi is integral to working with circles, it was super that the Pre-Prep spent the day focussed on circles. The Nursery pupils loved exploring the grounds looking for circles, once they got started they couldn’t stop, even finding circles in the playground that the Pre-Prep children had drawn!
In Reception the children learnt about the properties of a circle and that it is one curved line which is the same distance from the middle point. When the radius is made bigger or smaller, the circle becomes bigger or smaller. By using chalk and pencils attached to a piece of string they were able to test this for themselves as well as creating their own circles using art straws.
In Year 1, the children have been learning more about circles – and the words to describe a circle. They carefully cut out circular shapes and learnt the special names for the circumference, diameter and the radius of a circle. They then read the story, ‘Happy Pi Day to You’! with Dr Seuss's Cat in a Hat explaining all about measuring circles. They sang along to the song ‘Circles Everywhere!’
Year 2 ventured in to the woods to celebrate Pi Day. The children used a centre point and a radius to complete perfect ‘natural’ circles using leaves, twigs and stones. They even made their own perfect (ish) circle using people!
In Year 3 pupils learnt how to use compasses to draw circles and then made creative pictures using coloured circles and semi-circles. They were also amazing at taking the time to practise the numbers of pi to prepare for the patrol competition.
Year 4 pupils created circular spiral pictures, based on joining up consecutive digits of pi, to create some amazing images, both complex and colourful. They also made pi bracelets with different coloured beads representing each digit.
For Years 5-8, we decided to celebrate maths in the real world. Years 5 and 6 watched clips from Donald Duck in Mathmagic Land, in which it is explained how mathematics can be useful in real life. They focussed on Ancient Greece, seeing how the mathematician Pythagoras influenced music. They also looked at how the circle has been vital to 3D shapes in the real world, from the netball through to suspension bridges.
Years 7 and 8 looked at clips from films such as A Beautiful Mind (seeing how problems can be solved in different ways), The Man Who Knew Infinity (about the Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan and prime, square and cube numbers), and Hidden Figures, the inspiring film about the female African-American mathematicians, Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, who worked as human computers for NASA during the 1960s and who were eventually recognised for their vital contributions to the Space Program.
Read more about the AMAZING Inter-Patrol Digits of Pi competition - around 100 pupils took part and around 1300 digits were written down.
