As an essential subject, mathematics plays an important role in a child’s life. The experience of learning math is full of countless interesting and fascinating problems, just waiting for children to explore and comprehend. On March 14th, people around the world celebrated “Pi Day” since the date matches the first three digits of π: 3.14. To experience the fun of math learning, students of the SHSID primary section participated in a series of math-related activities and games to celebrate Pi Day.

Puxi Campus G4-5: Enjoy a Slice of Pi

Activities in fourth grade utilized and activated multi-intelligence of our students. The activities were closely combined with arts, music, and daily life, motivating students and promoting cross-subject application skills. Though Pi Day officially was only one day, the activities were carried out one week before and lasted throughout the week.

The first section is “Pi and Music.” By adding notes to the Pi numbers, students learned how to sing 3.1415926 with a beautiful melody. Plus, there were little musicians skilled at playing musical instruments who used Pi numbers instead of classic notation for their piano performance. With music, students easily and quickly remembered Pi numbers, transforming dull numbers into shining stars. Students also had the opportunity to upload their musical works onto the LC platform and view, comment, and vote on peers’ work. The combination of online and offline interactive teaching broadened the medium of communication and learning for students.

The second section of the fourth-grade activity was “Pi and Life.” Students worked in a group to create Pi posters on which students introduced the history of Pi, related mathematics, and fun facts of Pi. On the posters, students also shared the application of Pi in their daily lives. Some students applied fantastic drawing skills to design artworks, while others used food and everyday items to create “the sign of Pi.” Here are some of the creative and refined projects from our students.

On Thursday, March 11th, fifth-grade students began the “Pi Day Crossword” and “Pi Challenge” games. The students found the mystery of Pi by looking for circular objects and measuring their diameter and perimeter.

On Friday, math teachers put on colorful clothes featuring Pi to celebrate the day with their students. The students were divided into groups for the “Wheely Challenge,” which is a STEM activity. Each group of students made a wheel with wooden skewers, miniature marshmallows, toothpicks, and playdough, then tried to roll the wheel more than 3.14 meters. Through collaboration and teamwork, they completed the challenge. Additionally, the math teachers prepared an art project experience related to Pi for the students. Variously-sized pieces of cardboard were made into different graphics using the first ten digits of Pi. Finally, the traditional “π Challenge” competition was held online. Students could also choose mathematical terms related to Pi to compose songs, depending on their preference.

In summary, π Day activities of the Puxi Campus grades 4-5 aimed to stimulate students' curiosity in learning mathematics and push everyone to experience the infinite charm of mathematics.

Pudong Campus G1-5: Math Carnival

To celebrate Pi day and encourage students to learn math in real-life situations, different math activities were held on the SHSID Pudong campus this week. On the afternoon of March 11th, a much-anticipated event, the math carnival, was ongoing! Students walked through different classrooms and experienced elaborately designed math games with the guidance of homeroom teachers.

Let us visit classrooms of grade 1 first. In the tangram challenge game, students formed different shapes using tangram. They received a carnival stamp when they successfully unlocked a new shape. Next, for the “football math” game, the kids used four basic operations to get a target number according to the four original numbers on question cards.

In second grade, our little artists were invited to design creative shape patterns using the magic spirographs. The colorful curves that students drew formed a piece of art. They could not wait to try spirographs of different types and exchange stamps using the three patterns they made. Meanwhile, other students were participating in the highly anticipated “Leprechaun’s Gold Coin” game. For this activity, 12 number riddles were prepared, the answers to which were all hidden on the Leprechaun’s coins. Students who solved these riddles got another stamp!

A math activity called “Find Me If You Can” was ongoing inside the third-grade classroom. For this game, students had to find task cards and solve problems related to different math problems shown on the cards. The students who found the correct answers received points, with which they traded carnival stamps. In another area in third grade, there was a number puzzle game. Students participated in the game actively and tried their best to find the answers to the puzzles.

In the fourth-grade classroom, students were divided into pairs to take part in a “saving trees” themed math game. After rolling the dice, they needed to find and circle a certain number on the map by calculating the two numbers on the dice. The students who successfully surrounded a tree by encircling all the numbers around it was the winner. Excited to challenge themselves, the higher-grade kids tried their best to solve a “diffy” game. To win the game, they needed to use their logical reasoning and subtraction skills to find a pattern and then solve the equation. Moreover, some students were attracted by the “One Touch Drawing” and “maze game”. They trained their patience by getting out of the maze.

Now allow us to follow our students and go into the fifth-grade classroom. There was a stirring game called “101 and out” here. In this activity, two players throw the dice at the same time. They need to use different calculations to combine the numbers. The player who gets a result closer to 101 wins. In another activity called “Ms. Liu’s favorite number,” students had to pick out numbers from the number pool according to set rules within a fixed time.

The math carnival came to an end with joy and laughter. However, Pi day celebrations had not ended yet. On March 12th, wearing different kinds of “math T-shirts”, students jumped into the classroom delightfully in the morning and showed their ideas to teachers. The teachers dressed up with a math theme as well. Surrounded by curious students, the teachers explained the mathematical data on their t-shirts. Teachers from each grade prepared thrilling math activities of different varieties and new math instruction for the kids during class time. At the end of the day, the kids cheerfully ate delicious pie prepared by the school. Not only did they have fun on Pi day, but also they learned much knowledge related to math and practiced their problem solving and communicating skills.

Mathematics is essential to our world, and studying math builds problem-solving skills. We hope that these Pi Day activities can get our students thinking about the math all around them, discover the joy of learning math, and explore its mysteries!

(Written by Wu Yin, Liu Lei, Yuchen Xie, Yingying Pan, Haoruo Li, Yan Deng, Jingyang Gu Pictures by Kang Nina, Puxi Campus G4-5 Math Teachers, Teachers of Pudong Campus)