STEM Career Activity and Pi Day Fun

If you love Pi Day as much as I do, you are always on the lookout for new and engaging activities to try for this fun math-centric holiday! The “product” students have to package in this challenge is a variety of circles.

This activity brings a STEM career (packaging engineering) together with a hands-on shapes activity that is suitable for kids any age.

Try it at Home

Make an outline of a large shape on paper, or use pipe cleaners to form the “package” shape. Now use circles to fill the shape in the most efficient layout! You can use circle cutters, cut circles out of paper, use lids that would otherwise be recycled, or use dot circles. After your kids have the best layout, have them add up how many circles they were able to fit inside the shape! Older kids can measure the diameter of the circles and then sum them to obtain a final “score.” Now you can repeat with a different shape. What shape works better for housing circles? Why might that be?

There are so many kinds of STEM Careers!

Packaging engineering is just one type of job that an engineer might do. There are hundreds of STEM careers that kids can think about pursuing, depending on their interests and natural abilities. This simple activity gives a glimpse into what a packaging engineer might do, but on a kid-friendly level.

Go on a Packing Scavenger Hunt

The next time you are on a trip to the grocery store or another store, ask your child or children to look at the different types of packages they see. Think about asking some of these questions:

• What are the packages made of?
• What shapes are the packages?
• Is the product visible to the buyer before buying or not?
• Why do you think the item was packaged that way?

Grab the Resource

If you want to turn this into a more rigorous math and STEM activity, I’ve created a resource for you!

What’s Included

• Teacher instructions with relevant vocabulary overview and math explanation
• Background information in packaging engineering for students
• Paper STEM activity (3 part challenge) in 2 levels
• Digital STEM activity (3 part challenge) in 2 levels
• Sample solution with answer key