Celebrate Pi Day with fun games and activities

Happy Pi Day! 

People around the world celebrate this mathematical holiday on March 14 (and several other dates) in honor of  Pi, Greek letter (π), the symbol for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter.

Pi is equal to 3.1415926535… (continuing on forever).  It is an irrational and transcendental number, meaning it will continue infinitely without repeating.  It has been calculated on computers to over 1 trillion digits past the decimal point!

Here's some fun activities to teach the kids about Pi.

• Make a paper chain representing the numbers.  Use a different color of paper for each digit and see how long you can make it.  Ask the kids if they can find any patterns in the colors.
• Challenge the kids to see how many digits of Pi they can memorize.  Here it is to 50 decimal places:  3.14159 26535 89793 23846 26433 83279 50288 41971 69399 37510
• Sing Pi Day songs.
• Find all different circular foods and figure out their areas (A = π r2, or Area equals pi times the radius squared) before eating them.
• Have Pizza Pi for supper.  Decorate the top with toppings in the shape of pi.
• Write a different number (0-9) on 10 paper plates and put them on the floor, close together.  Have each child start on the number 3 and hop to the right plate as you call out the next number.  See how far they can each get before missing or falling over.
• Challenge the kids with this Pi Day Sudoku puzzle.
• Check out how people in Minnesota and other states celebrate Pi Day here (in Duluth they used to shout out "Pi!" during basketball games when the scoreboard got to 3:14, for example), and submit your own ideas.
• Bake a pie, of course!