Ever since I started teaching, March 14th has been one of my favorite days because it’s Pi Day! Pi is represented by the symbol (?). It’s the number you get when you divide a a circle’s circumference by its diameter. Pi Day relates to circles, and circles are everywhere you look. Even young kids can celebrate Pi Day activities by examining circles, and working with early fraction concepts like fair-sharing. These 15 Pi Day activities range from the simple to the complex, so there is something for everyone!
15 Pi Day Activities
- Make cute Pi Day friendship cards
- Make a real Pi pie in a Pi pie pan (try saying that 3 times fast!)
- Score free (or cheap) pie! Check out these sweet Pi Day deals on Offers.com.
- Have a pi- themed dress-up day, or sport a math-themed Pi Day jersey.
- Turn a graph of the numbers in Pi into a colorful skyline with this math art activity.
- Read the math adventure story Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi.
- Make a color-coded necklace to represent the digits in pi. Do you see a pattern? 😉
- Sing along to a silly parody, “Mathematical Pi” (American Pie). If nothing else, it’s fun to find the math references!
- String, scissors, and a round object are all you’ll need to “Cut Pi”
- Write a “Pi-Ku”. The poem style of Haiku is 5-7-5. The first line in the poem has 5 syllables, the second line has 7 and the final line has 5 syllables again. For Pi Day, the syllables in each line are 3-1-4. Here’s my attempt at a Pi-Ku:
- Make these beautiful math suncatchers using fuse beads. Suncatcher difficulty level: Easy. Math application difficulty level: Advanced. Hold onto your protractors, folks!
- See who can memorize the most digits in pi. Here are the first 10,000 digits, to get you started.
- Have a hula hoop contest. No math involved, but it gets kids moving and using circles!
- Tell some side-splitting pi day jokes.
- Younger kids will love Pink Stripey Socks’s Race Around the Circle game. More active math fun!
Finding pi
Math
Numbers are fun
Most of my teaching experience has been in the primary grades, when the kids aren’t quite ready to grasp calculations related to pi. That never stopped me from donning my latest math t-shirt and embracing another opportunity to make math fun. Happy Pi Day!
