Planning Pi Day in the Primary Classroom

Hello there!  I'm Pamela Wendt from Hedgehog Reader, and I am absolutely delighted to be the guest blogger today on Who's Who and Who's New!

It's Almost Pi Day!

Tomorrow is being hailed as the most epic Pi Day of the century, thanks to the date aligning so perfectly with the first five digits of this most famous irrational number:

(Adorable clip art and font credit to Krista Wallden and Kimberly Geswein)

Although the fact that Pi Day falls on a Saturday this year pretty much eliminates celebrating with our kids on the actual day, those always-ready-for-a-holiday youngsters are not going to mind one little bit that the festivities occur a day early or two days late!

Planning for Pi Day

There are a gazillion Pi Day ideas, activities, and lesson plans out there to choose from, so I wanted to put together a one-stop post of how I plan the day.  I hope that there might be something here that helps save you a little time!

First, I establish the length of the period.  Typically I will spend only one day for an observance like Pi Day, but I do allow for some activities to trickle into another day if necessary.  (This is especially true of writing activities, or visual arts - activities in which students are particularly self-paced and often requiring adequate production time.)

Next, I find it easiest to organize my thoughts - as well as the wonderful ideas out there on Pinterest and other treasure troves - into a graphic organizer.  I've always been a fan of Multiple Intelligences, so that is the foundation of my structure, but I've modified the categories to fit my needs.  For instance, bodily-kinesthetic becomes "movement," and verbal-linguistic is divided into "literature" and "writing." 

I've created a freebie based on the graphic organizer I use for my own planning.  Please feel free to click and download it from my store:

Pi Day Plans Galore

Here are some ideas (and links gleaned from Pinterest) for each region of the graphic organizer to help inspire your own creativity.  This is only the tippy-top tip of a very huge iceberg, so have fun exploring as these links will undoubtedly lead you to even more!

Literature - 

Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi

Writing - 

Author's Purpose - What better day to refresh our understanding of Persuade, Inform, and Entertain?

Another fun activity is to write haiku based on circles, pi, and other related content.

Math - 

Cutting Pi - a hands-on look at the relationship between a circle's circumference and its diameter

How to Teach Pi to Little Ones can be adapted for all grade levels

Pi Plates

Math Bites: The Pi Episode

Science - 

Celebrating STEM on Pi Day

Social Studies - 

Exploratorium's History of Pi

Movement - 

Introduce vocabulary and discuss concepts with this Fun with Balls and Hoops activity

And here are 10 Games to Play with a Ball

Music - 

Music Playlist

Pi Day Songs

What Pi Sounds Like

Art - 

Pi Day Crafts

Two Ways to Turn Pi into Artwork

Pi Skyline

Group - 

Mnemonic Devices - A fun independent or small-group activity would be to come up with tricky ways to remember the value of pi.

Self - 

Where is Your Birthday in Pi?

Other Notes - 

Many Teachers Pay Teachers stores will celebrate Pi Day with a sale tomorrow.  This graphic will take you to a clickable download created by Bethany Lau of Science and Math with Mrs. Lau:

Pi Day is also the birthday of Albert Einstein, so there are some fun tie-ins there.  I will leave you with one of my favorite Pinterest finds for Pi Day this year:

Happy Planning, and Happy Pi Day!

     Summer is here and time to dive into the OCEAN!  

     What a perfect time to study the ocean and beach!   We'd like to share some of our favorite activities in our ocean/beach thematic unit.

     When starting a new unit of study we begin by building a “community” bulletin board.  Everyone in the class contributes in creating the habitat.  For the ocean, we start with  a blue background and add large clumps of seaweed for inspiration!  Step one involves brainstorming all the living things that might be found in  the ocean.  Next, each student is given a white piece of paper with instructions to completely fill it with their drawing.  We found they have success if they first draw their “creature” in pencil and then color it with crayons or colored pencils.  When it is complete, they cut around their drawing and all the pieces are stapled to the blue background.  When the board is complete, the whole class says, “It’s alive!” as we marvel at our beautiful ocean scene.

     

This is a close-up picture of a small part of the bulletin board.

 Parent participation is always welcomed throughout the school year. Early on, we send a letter asking parents if they would be willing to share their talents, hobbies, skills, and professions with our class.  This is always optional but the parents love to be part of their child’s learning experiences.  When our ocean unit starts, we are amazed to find life guards, fishermen, boat owners, snorkelers, scuba divers, etc. all willing to come in and share!

For example, one parent brought in all the gear necessary to go scuba diving and snorkeling.  We pushed back the classroom furniture to clear a large space.  The students had fun putting on the flippers and snorkeling gear.  They even tried carrying a air tank and discovered it was quite heavy.  They pretended to go scuba diving with the carpeting being the ocean floor.  We placed some large seashells around for them to pick up.  What an experience!

     Ready for a GOOEY slightly smelly hands-on Experience?  Bring in a whole large fish from the grocery store (yes, with the head still on!) and use it to look at the body parts (bones, gills, fins, eyes, etc.) The boys LOVE this!  It is great for  generating describing words (ie. smelly, slimy, and slippery!)  We then do a rubbing placing paper on top of the fish and rubbing a soft pencil over it to notice the scales.  Have the students write what they learned about a fish! This activity can only last a few days of course! 

     As we continue to study about the ocean many discussions pop up which lead into writing projects for the whole class.  Here are a few of the class book covers we use to motivate our students.   

       In making the cover for The Message, use a piece of colored cardstock and cut the bottle shape out before laminating.  Here’s the tricky part….as you are SLOWY laminating, slip a little piece of paper in so it will be somewhere near the middle of the bottle. You might want to STOP the laminator so you can slip the word under the film!   (We wrote the word HELP on the note.)  We talk about why someone would send a message in a bottle and what it might say. Then they’re off and writing!

    In making this book cover, Deep in the Sea, put aluminum foil  around the porthole to give it a metallic look.  An ocean scene appears in the center of  the porthole showing the  bottom of the sea.  Remember to cut out the top part of the porthole before laminating so the clear film will give the feeling of a piece of window glass.  Place a blue piece of paper as the first page of the book so it will appear blue behind the porthole.  We talk about submarines and other types of diving boats that would have portholes to view the ocean.   The kids just love looking through both the bottle and the porthole when looking at their class books.  (Helpful hint:  If you don't put your name or classroom number on the cover you can replace the students' writings each year and reuse the covers! Time saver!!)

       Do a lot of Read-alouds with Ocean books to build background knowledge.  Students can write either fictional stories or non-fiction mini-reports about what they learned and what they saw (if you happen to live near an ocean!) or could see in the deep blue sea. Use your imagination!  And of course, most everyone has seen Finding Nemo so they have that for a reference point!  

This DOWNLOADABLE file contains a class book cover and 3 styles of themed writing paper.  Click {here} to find it! 

   We conclude our thematic study with individual ocean scenes.   Each student is given a piece of blue tag board.  Students either make new sea animals or reuse the ones they stapled on the community board.   Green construction paper is used to make their seaweed.

BEFORE gluing anything each student should draw a wiggly line at the top of their paper for the waves and a line about 2 inches from the bottom to create the ocean floor.  Once students have all their pieces,  they are ready to add the REAL sand and shells to their paper.

    SAND:  We have found the best way to manage the sand is to use a box to contain it. The paper is "painted" with white glue using a paint brush.  Place the blue paper into the box.  Students  scoop up some sand and sprinkle it over the glue. Lightly shake off the excess.  Place the paper on a flat surface and add REAL shells (use small ones and LOTS of glue!).  You might want to limit the number of shells (3-5) you give to each student as they will go crazy with the shells!  Elmer's glue works well and dries clear.   Sand and shells can be found at any craft store.  There is usually enough sand and shells to do this many times in the coming years so the cost is fairly minimal.   Glue on the sea creatures and their beautiful ocean scenes appear!  This art project is something they will treasure! 

     After studying about ocean life we have a “celebration”!  It was NOT a party as we can only have 3 parties a year.   However there is no limit to the number of  “celebrations” a classroom can have!!  We serve blue jello in clear cups with gummy fish.   Fish sticks, small popcorn shrimp and clam chowder round out our Ocean “celebration” meal.  

(You can see our ocean community bulletin board in the background.)

                              Here is a FREE game you might enjoy using with your Ocean studies.  

It comes with EDITABLE cards so ANY content can be added: sight words, math facts, your choice!

Beach Time Game FREEBIE with EDITABLE cards

Visit our website for other Ocean-themed ideas!