Sir Circumference Math, Positively Medieval


This year I have enjoyed teaching math using Cindy Neuschwander's Sir Circumference stories. There are ten stories and they introduce geometry concepts as well as base ten, rounding, fractions and graphing skills. Sir Circumference is one of King Arthur's "Knights of the round" and that is where the first story begins: with the creation of the round table. Sir Circumference and the Dragon of Pi is also about circles. I used this book second. The story discusses the relationship between diameter and circumference, that is the same for every circle, Pi.

I have the activity book for these stories and it is full of worksheets to copy and great ideas for classroom activities. The activities are designed for a third through seventh grader. I have students younger than that; so I have created a few activities for my younger ones. I'll share these extra activities here.

Sir Circumference and the First Round Table, by Cindy Neuschwander is about circles. I taught the properties of a circle and we measured the circumference and diameter of many different circular objects: hula hoop, plate, etc. There is a worksheet to record these measurements in the activity book. My younger ones did not take the math any further than that. My fourth grader was able to answer the questions on the worksheet about relationship between the diameter and the circumference, this got him thinking about the topic of the next book.

 Sir Circumference and the Dragon of Pi, Cindy Neuschwander. In this story Sir Circumference gets a little sick. His son Radius has a mishap with the medicine for him and the adventure begins. In order to fix Sir Circumference, Radius has to solve the riddle of Pi. Older students can use the worksheets in the activity book to derive Pi. My fourth grader was able to solve the math problems using the 3 1/7 fraction and then we memorized Pi as 3.14. I wanted my younger students to recognize the word
Pi as different than pie. Pie that we eat is a circle shape and I wanted them to remember that Pi without an e is a Greek letter representing the number we use for circles. It is three diameters plus a little more. I designed the worksheet pictured below. The strips of felt making the crust -circumference- of the pie are cut into the length of the diameter of that pie. As the students glued the three diameter length strips end to end around the pie, they had a little space left over. That showed the little bit more. They were able to see that the distance around the circle is three diameters plus a little more, namely Pi, 3.14.





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