You might be thinking to yourself, “Am I being irrational to wonder why people are celebrating Pi Day?”  And you would be correct as Pi is completely irrational.  

Pi is the ratio of the circumference (the distance all the way around a circle) to the diameter (the distance across the circle) which always equals the same number.  The number begins 3.1415, and no matter how many decimals places you take it to, it will never end.  How cool is that!  This irrational number is call pi, not to be confused with pie, and it’s symbol is ∏.

March 14th is Pi Day because of that 3/14. It also happens to be Albert Einstein’s birthday so we get two math celebrations in one.  

Here are some great ideas for celebrating Pi Day with your students.

1.  Cutting Pi

What you need:

·      Something circular like a plate, plastic yogurt top, top of a bowl, etc.

·      Yarn or string

·      Scissors  

What you do:

·      Wrap the string around the outside of the circular objects (circumference).

·      Cut the string to the exact length of the circumference.

·      Take the cut string and pay it across the diameter of the circular objects, cut the strings at that length. Repeat. How many pieces of string do you have that are the same length? How much is left over?

2.  Pi Poem  

What you need:

·      Paper and pencil

·      First 20+ digits of Pi

3.141592653589793238462

           What you do:

·      Create a poem where each word is the same number of letters as the digit in Pi.

Example:  Now! I want a treat delicious to devour among our peers

                     3     1    4   1    5          9         2      6           5         3      5

3.  Pi Beads

What you need:

·      Beads in 10 different colors/styles

·      String

What you do:

·      Set up a color pallet of digit and corresponding number.

Example: 0 white, 1 red,2 blue, 3, yellow, 4 green, 5 pink, 6 purple, 7 black, 8 silver, 9 gold

·      Students string the beads onto the string in the correct number color order to coincide with the Pi digits

4.  Pi Chain

What you need:

·      Colored paper in 10 different colors cut in 1 x 5.5 inch strips

·      Stapler or tape

What you do:

·      Decide which color represents which number.

·      Take the color strip that represents the number make it into a circle and staple ends together.

·      Next strip that does with the correct digit goes through the middle of the previous link and staple the ends together.

·      See how long a Pi Chain can make over the month of March

5.  Pi Books

·      It Happened One Pi Day: The Easy Way to Memorize Pi

·      The Joy of Pi

·      Not A Wake

·      Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi

·      Pi: A Biography of the World’s Most Mysterious Number

http://www.teachpi.org/links/books/

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6.  Einstein Quotes

What you need:

·      Collection of Einstein Quotes

·      Construction paper

·      Markers

·      circle

What you do:

·      Have your students write out some of Einstein’s quotes and decorate them with markers and circles and place them around the room.  

Some I like:

Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.

Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.

We can’t solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

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