Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi

Raving book review alert! Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi.

This is a maths book that was recommended to be a couple of months ago. Ebi-kun got it with his birthday presents but hadn't got around to reading it, which was a plus because I decided to read it a bit differently.

Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi

The story is about learning about the value of pi and why it is important. Basically the knight gets turned into the dragon and the boy (Radius) needs to figure out how much of the medicine he has to give his dad to turn him back to a knight.

He does this by following a riddle and measuring various circles until he cracks the puzzle. As Radius goes through the book, we followed along. Ebi-kun got the tape measure out and he went and measured various circles around the house.

Both the diameter and circumference...

Then recorded the findings on a piece of paper. Once we had finished the book, I went through the maths with him, showing him how to work out the circumference if you only know the diameter. I will go through the opposite equation in a couple of days because I don't want to overload him with too much at once.

Ebi-kun was super excited to do all this, I wish maths had been this much fun when I was a kid! I will certainly be ordering more books from the series - I think this is actually the second book. 

Ebi-kun says: It is great, not only is the story funny but you can do the things at the same time as Radius and now I can work out the circumference of a circle!

The other book I ordered at the same time was "What's Your Angle, Pythagoras? A Math Adventure". We haven't read this one together yet but I will do it in the same way and do the work as we read it.

I think if you have a child who struggles with math then this type of book can really help, they can see the math in action and connect to the theory better or for a child like Ebi-kun who just loves learning especially when it is presented in a fun way. He hasn't done anything like this in school yet, he starts multiplication next term!

Liked this post, want more of this type of thing? Hop on the MOC fanzine, it's free!