Salmon Bay School celebrate national Pi-Day

Salmon Bay School (1810 NW 65th St) hosted their third annual Pi-Day celebration last Friday night. Over 300 people attended and shared over 100 pies to celebrate the well-known mathematical symbol.

The national event is held each year on Pi-Day, 3.14 or March 14. Apart from the excitement of eating pie, the school celebrates the event to introduce families to fun of math through exploring out of school related math activities. “The school’s Pi-Night is such a great idea. An event like this helps both students and parents see that math doesn’t have to be considered something difficult to learn, but a whole lot of fun,” says 5th Grade Teacher Brian Williamson.

During this year’s event families had the opportunity to explore math orientated table games and computer programs. They also had a chance to take part in activities including Math board games and Common Core Math Bingo. “I really like all the games at Pi-Night because we get to think about math in a fun way, and, we get to do math together with our friends,” said Middle School student Sophie Adams.

Participants made their rounds through the different activities, marking their progress of learning about the domains on a Common Core bingo card. Once the bingo card achieved “black out” participants were then eligible to enter the draw for pie and math related prizes donated by local retailers.

The finale of the event was a crowd-pleaser as a student won the opportunity to throw a “friendly” pie at Vice Principal, Brett Joachim’s face. “This year’s Pi-Night was a great success!  I saw parents and students having fun with math; students and parents learning from math games; and parents learning about the Common Core State Standards for Math,” said Joachim. Check out the pie throwing photo to the right!

The evening was deemed a success by students and parents alike including Salmon Bay parent Bridget Goglia. “Pi-Night is so much fun because we see kids get excited about math.  Games are such a good way to learn math.  It was especially great to watch kids teaching other kids how to play the games,” says Goglia.

Photos courtesy of Dana Riley.