Learn About Pi With LEGO® Bricks - Free Printable
Wednesday, March 19, 2014 at 5:00AM
Let's completely geek out for this post.
Stick with me. This was a FUN activity with my nine year old son, and I am just willing to bet that you have a child similar to him living in your house, too!
It all started on Pi Day (3.14). I thought it would be fun to commemorate the day with an art activity. Big sister (12) joined in for this simple and effective Pi Sklyine from What We Do All Day. (My daughter's is on the top - it's a night skyline. Grant's is on the bottom.)
I didn't have intentions of going any further with Pi. At this age, it's simply enough that my son knows our Classical Conversations memory work surrounding Pi:
The area of a circle equals Pi (3.14) times the radius squared.
The circumference of a circle equals two times Pi (3.14) times the radius.
What happens, however, when you have an intense kid in the house, is sometimes a concept like this MUST be explored further because their brain won't rest until they know ALL the facts.
As presentation time for Classical Conversations time rolled around, Grant was looking at one of his green base plates (do you own base plates from LEGO® Education? they come in very handy!) and said, "I could make the Pi skyline out of LEGOS."
I've learned to respond like this:
"Show me!"
And he did.
He simply took each number in Pi and built a LEGO building with that number of bricks as its height. (You can see he got as far as the 9 at the end - second to last digit - of the first line in the picture above.)
So simple and SO effective.
{Finding a lot of simple bricks in your child's LEGO collection might be hard. I recommend having a Basic Brick Set on hand for math and activities like this. We keep all of these bricks in our small Lay-n-Go and pull it out when needed. Easy.}
In order to create a presentation surrounding this, we did a little bit of research on Pi. This video about the history of Pi was VERY interesting. We couldn't believe there is a Pi 1,000 club - where members can recite the first 1,000 digits of Pi.
I've created a simple download for you to print and give to your LEGO lover.
The sky is the limit! (Literally)
Click here to download the LEGO® Pi Printable.
If your child builds a LEGO Pi Skyline, please email me a picture at mary dot prather at Homegrownlearners dot com. I'd love to feature their creation in an upcoming LEGO post!
What fun things has your LEGO lover been up to recently?? Leave me a comment and let me know!
Reader Comments (2)
I love this idea! We did some pi stuff for Pi Day this year, too. You can see our pi(e) that (are) square at this link : http://twentyfootgarden.blogspot.com/2014/03/happy-international-pi-day.html
I guess I totally geeked out on Pi day, too. The kids and I had so much fun making a square pi for Pi Day, and I think it pressed in the idea a little.
This is wonderful!! Love it and can't wait to have my son try it.