Tuesdays we do math, science, strategy, and the related skills of logical thinking involving deduction. In honor of upcoming Pi Day on Sat. 3/14 we listened to the above book in YouTube. Here is a summary of the book from Amazon:

For fans of the Sir Cumference series with Pi on their mind, here is the second installment in this fun look at math and language. This time the math adventure is centered around a potion that changes Sir Cumference into a fire-breathing dragon. Can Radius change him back? Join Radius on his quest through the castle to solve a riddle that will reveal the cure. It lies in discovering the magic number that is the same for all circles. Perfect for parent and teachers who are looking to make math fun and accessible for everyone.

Then we did a related activity from Bethany at mathgeekmama.com, from her list of Pi Day Activities, over here. She has some great ideas. I love the sing a long songs about pi, sung to familiar tunes.

The measurement activity that we did from that link, related to the Sir Cumference picture book, was hard for most of the kids (in our group we have ages 10 to 15). I was hoping to play the game she had listed but the kids couldn’t even get past the activity measuring different circles I gave them (lids, pie tin, cake pan, etc.) and understand the relationship of pi to the diameter and pi to the circumference. Some of them wrote down answers just to write down answers and say they were done. When I tested them with questions, they couldn’t answer correctly. So I’ll be working on teaching pi again another time.

To lighten things up a bit we played Da Vinci’s Challenge, since it involves patterns that derive from intersecting circles, and pi relates to circles. It’s a 2 player game, or a 2-team game. You score points by making patterns that all come from “the flower of life” that Da Vinci used. I’m figuring what groupings would work best so to minimize the negative talk and competitiveness. We did girls vs. boys today and the girls won, because they completed a “star” pattern for 10 points that the boys didn’t even see coming. I’m going to play this with my husband for date night at home, it will be a lot more enjoyable with no arguing. Maybe we will do Bethany’s Pi Logic Puzzle as well. What a nerdy date. 🙂

That’s it for another day of gameschooling! We also made pie today in honor of pi. 😉 We’ll probably do it again on the actual Pi Day and sing the songs from the the mathgeekmama.com’s site I linked to above. They are clever!

If you want to know what else we’ve been playing, go here.

If you want:

-to get my presentation about about gameschooling, my slides turned into a PDF

-AND a PDF of how to build a gameschool collection on a budget

-and the link to read a free copy of The Board Game Family, go here.