Pi Day!
/The Sea Lions had a fantastic, math-filled Friday as we explored the concept of Pi together! We started by thinking about how we could describe a circle. using only words - it was trickier than we thought it would be! In the end, we discovered that the most accurate definition included mention of a center point, with points equidistant from it - the radius lines! We got to work with our Pi Partner, choosing a place on the floor to begin creating our circles, using radius measurements and tape to define the outside edge. Then we used yarn to define the circumference of our circles. It was very precise (and a bit tricky!) but super fun work! Once we had created our circle, we talked about the term diameter and went to work in our math journals to figure out the diameter of our circle, using r x 2 = d.
Finally, we talked about this crazy term Pi and learned that Pi (π) is a special number that represents the relationship between a circle's circumference (the distance around it) and its diameter (the distance across it through the center). We learned that the reason mathematicians use a symbol to represent Pi is that Pi is an irrational number, meaning its decimal representation goes on forever without repeating - how cool is that?
In order to complete the final step in our Pi investigations, we measured a piece of yarn equal to our circle’s diameter and found that on every one of our circles (no matter how big or small!) our diameter string went around the circumference of our circles three times…plus a little bit!
We ended our day sharing pie with our friends and family. Math is cool, tasty and FUN!
