Pi Day Party

From 8am to 2pm last Thursday, my mom, myself, my grandfather, two school teachers, and ten other homeschooling moms and dads got together and put on a huge math-related event for about 50 local homeschooled kids.

Why Thursday? Why, because it was March 14^th, or 3/14, affectionally named pi day.

Spring break is the perfect time for events, trips, or projects. I didn’t go anywhere except home, but a lot happened. My mom always throws a pi day party, and this year, without even remembering I would be home to help her prepare, she decided she was going to go all out. The goal of the party was simply to get kids excited about math. Turns out, it wasn’t hard. 

We sorted the kids by age groups in the beginning of the morning and sent them with different people to work on different math-related projects. At one station, each group learned about the unit circle and the significance of the irrational number pi from my mom. At another, they used compasses and protractors to create art. At a third, they heard my grandfather, an engineer who had retired from Eastman, talk about the purpose of math and its uses in every-day life. And at a fourth, they threw frisbees and rolled bike wheels and learned about the aerodynamics of spinning circles.

I myself spent the morning teaching each group how to use an abacus. Mom wrote to her favorite math curriculum company and asked them to sponsor our event, and when they agreed, they sent us (among other things) six abacuses to give away as door prizes. We own some that we use in our own math curriculums, so it was fun (and also easy) to write a short lesson about how (and why) to use an abacus.

After lunch, we had a math scavenger hunt. This time, children were divided up into teams of all ages, and sent around the yard to perform different math-related tasks or solve different math problems. I worked with my grandfather, another engineering dad, and my oldest younger brother (Peter) to judge the kids on each task and award points to each team.

Overall, the party was a huge success! 

Since I was back in town, I also spent 3 hours on Friday volunteering at the hospital. I put together packets for incoming patients in the Wound Care department and sorted and filed employee information in Human Resources.