Pizza, then Pi and finally Pies — What More Can You Want on a Well-Rounded Pi Day?

Graphing Circumference vs Diameter of various round objects

Tuesday, March 14 was Pi Day (3.14)  What better excuse is there to have a celebration of math with middle schoolers than π?     Last Friday night, well over 250 students, parents, teachers, and volunteers from the high school, PTA and community, celebrated π  at the Healey School by eating pizza for dinner, then spending an evening estimating, creating, collecting data, answering questions, and ending with pies for everyone.

After feeling a jar lid in the box, making an estimate of it's circumference in mm

After enjoying pizza donated by the Bickoff family of the Commercial Cleaning Service (discounted by White Sport), the students from the Healey School, who were joined by students from, East Somerville, Argenziano, West Somerville and Kennedy Schools went around to a wide variety of math activities set up in the gym.  These activities included: bicycle wheel roll, guessing contest, tooth pick drop (Buffon Needle problem), drawing a circle the size of a CD, mystery boxes, π button design, π facts quiz, birthday in π, circle in square vs square in circle, drawing cardioid or nephroid, drawing concentric circles by folding, drawing circles by tangents, drawing circle by right angles, graphing circumference vs diameter, predicting circumferences in mm by feel of objects in mystery boxes.

Predicting how far the bike wheel will roll in 1.5 revolutions

The event was planned by Wil Jacques (Healey), Jen Rodriguez (Healey), and Erica Voolich (Somerville Mathematics Fund) with help from Scott Weaver (ESCS) and Jonathan Killian (Argenziano).  Table Talk Pies of Worcester generously supplied small pies for all who came that night and large pies for the winners of events.  Table Talk has generously supported this Somerville Math Fund event for fourteen years.

Estimating the number of objects in the jars

When planning the first SMF π Night in 2003, the Math Fund called the Table Talk Pi Company and explained what π day was and Table Talk generously donated large pies for prizes and small pies for everyone.  Fourteen years later, Table Talk Pies is not only still donating to the the Somerville Pi night celebration, but to many more celebrations.   In fact, this year Table Talk donated than 56,832 pies to schools and organizations celebrating pi day — but most likely the pi day celebrations were delayed all over New England thanks to the March Pi Day Nor’easter.

Finding their birth date in Pi

A big thank you to all the volunteers and donors who made this fun, educational evening possible.  It takes a community to celebrate π day!

Making Pi Buttons

The Somerville Mathematics Fund, was founded in 2000 with the mission to celebrate and encourage mathematics achievement in Somerville MA.  In April they will be looking for applications for renewable college mathematics scholarships.  For more information or to make a donation or to volunteer, www.somervillemathematicsfund.org or mathfund@gmail.com or call 617-666-0666.

Drawing a cardioid using only straight lines

The link to this page is http://somervillemathematics.blogspot.com/2017/03/pizza-then-pi-and-finally-pies-what.html
©2017 Erica Dakin Voolich

Pizza, then Pi and finally Pies — What More Can You Want on Ultimate Pi Day?

Drawing a nephroid with straight lines

Saturday, March 14 was Pi Day (3.14) -- but not just any π Day, it was Ultimate π Day because it is 2015:  3.14.15!  What better excuse is there to have a celebration of math with middle schoolers than π?     Well over 200 students, parents, teachers, and volunteers  from the high school, PTA and community, celebrated π  at the Healey School by eating pizza for dinner, then spending an evening estimating, creating, collecting data, answering questions, and ending with pies for everyone.

Graphing Diameter vs Circumference

After enjoying pizza donated by the Bickoff family (discounted by White Sport), the students from Healey, who were joined by students from East Somerville Community School (ESCS), and Argenziano schools went around to a wide variety of math activities set up in the gym and cafeteria.

Drawing circles using tangents.

These activities included: bicycle wheel roll, guessing contest, tooth pick drop (Buffon Needle problem), drawing a circle the size of a CD, mystery boxes, π button design, π facts quiz, birthday in π, circle in square vs square in circle, drawing cardioid or nephroid, drawing concentric circles by folding, drawing circles by tangents, drawing circle by right angles, predicting how high of a pour, predicting circumferences and radii, and graphing circumference vs diameter.

Pitching pennies to determine a better target:
a circle in a square or a square in a circle.

The event was planned by Wil Jacques (Healey), Scott Weaver (ESCS), and Erica Voolich (Somerville Mathematics Fund).  Table Talk Pies of Worcester generously supplied small pies for all who came that night and large pies for winners of events.  Table Talk has generously supported this Somerville Math Fund event for twelve years.  Star Market/Shaws (Beacon Street) generously donated most of the juice.

Drawing a cardioid using straight lines.

When planning the first SMF π Night in 2003, the Math Fund called the Table Talk Pi Company and explained what π day was and Table Talk generously donated large pies for prizes and small pies for everyone.  Eleven years later, Table Talk Pies is not only still donating to the the Somerville Pi night celebration, but to many more celebrations.   In fact, this year Table Talk donated more than 43,000 pies to schools celebrating pi day.

Taking a π facts quiz.

A big thank you to all the volunteers and donors who made this fun, educational evening possible.  It takes a community to celebrate π day!

Estimating circumference in mm by feel.

The Somerville Mathematics Fund, was founded in 2000 with the mission to celebrate and encourage mathematics achievement in Somerville MA.  In April they will be looking for applications for college mathematics scholarships.  For more information or to make a donation or to volunteer, www.somervillemathematicsfund.org or mathfund@gmail.com or call 617-666-0666.

The link to the page is http://somervillemathematics.blogspot.com/2015/03/pizza-then-pi-and-finally-pies-what.html
©2015, Erica Dakin Voolich

News about this year's teacher winners

There was a nice article in the Somerville News about the Healey School teacher grant winners.

Check it out.

Healey Students Report on their Family Math Night

Compiled and submitted by Nathaniel, Jackson, Sophia, Laila, Karlos, Marcela, Nicholas, Kyara, Loden, Shane, Madison, Grace, Sam and Isabel from Room # 106.

As second grade students many of us have gone to Healey School Family Math Night for three years and played a lot of different games. Since 14 out of 21 children in our class went, 2/3 of our class was there! This was the Eighth Annual Family Math Night for Kindergarten through Grade Two. Math Night was on Tuesday, June 2nd this year. It was the best night for a lot of us like Marcela and full of fun! “Family Night rocked!”

After we got our passports, some of us went to Estimation Station where we estimated different containers of healthy food and explained our thinking. Family Math Night had so many games that none of us played them all. We spent time finding our friends so we could play games together. We played with partners like Karlos and Nathaniel, alone and with more than two! We learned new games. Laila enjoyed the pizza and water and had a lot of fun with family and friends.

Table activities were set up in the cafeteria. In Watch Out for the Smile we kept adding numbers from the dice until we rolled a smile. Then we took away the numbers from that turn. In Nim, we had 15 stirrers. Each person could take 1,2 or 3 away but no one wanted to have the last stirrer! Grace played three times. We made some pretty quilt squares to make a paper quilt. We learned that we could make some of the games ourselves with egg cartons like Scramble Shake and Mancala. Loden made and played Mancala on a camping trip this way! In Origami, Kyara's mother showed her how to make a puppy. Some other games were Empty the Bowl, Baseball Go, Roll to Cover, Start and Jump, How Many Am I Hiding, Dot to Dot, Hexagon Moves and Tangrams. The games were fun, but tiring for Sam!

In the gym, seventh and eighth graders helped Mrs. C.B. set up and help with actively pursuing math activities. Nicholas observed that the most people were probably at bowling. Other popular activities were Measure Me, Bean Bag Math and Great Musical Sums (like Musical Chairs except no one was out and when the music stopped, we rolled dice and put the number on a chart).

We went in Ms. Murdock's room to play board games, to use calculators and to build Tall Towers. One time the tower was so big it was taller than Jackson standing on a chair! Here, Isabel taught others how to play yet another version of Mancala.

Madison noted that Family Math Night was a success. We even had high school teenagers helping out including Mr. Michel's daughter and Laila's sister. Shane was very happy to go to Math Night this year even though he will be too old next year. He wants to volunteer when he is older. Sophia sadly reported that this was her first and last time going to Family Math Night because she was going on to Third Grade. As summed up by Karlos, “Family Math Night was a blast!”