Fun ways to celebrate Pi Day with kids! From eating pie to playful math to pi themed art projects, we’ve got pi activities for everyone!
Pi Day – a day set aside every year on March 14th to celebrate the mathematical constant 3.1415 (etc.) is a fun day for math geeks like me. I also think that Pi Day is a wonderful opportunity to get kids thinking about ways in which math can be fun, so today I am sharing some fun ways to celebrate Pi Day with kids – a few days early, so you have time to plan. This year it is extra special, because a sequential time will occur during Pi Day at 9:26:53 following the sequence of pi (you can also celebrate at 9:26:54 if you choose to round up).
Pi Day Activities for Kids
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Have you ever tried to visualize Pi? Last year my brilliant bloggy friend Erica wrote a wonderful post about creating Pi skyline art.
I thought Erica’s post was cool, but it required a lot of patience, and the image immediately reminded me of Cuisenaire rods, which happen to be one of my favorite math manipulatives.
Then I discovered these overhead projector Cuisenaire rods, and I knew they would be even more fun for my Pi Day project! This is a great affordable light table solution for a single child.
Learning Through Pi Day Play
The kids spent some time playing with the overhead Cuisenaire rods on the table, because playing with math manipulatives is one the best ways for kids to develop a mathematical instinct! Do you see how Anna is laying the foundation for understanding fractions as she plays with these little overhead pieces on our light table?
Cuisenaire rods are color coded based on how many units long they are. We used the light table Cuisenaire rods because they are a lot of fun and they photograph beautifully, but the wooden or plastic ones work equally well and are the same colors and length. The white squares represent one unit, red two, lime green three, magenta four, yellow five, green six, brown 7, red eight, and blue nine. We didn’t need the orange ten unit piece for this project.
You can read the first 23 digits of pi on our light table in the image above (or the identical one at the top of this post): 3.1415926535897932384626. Want more digits? You can find the first 10,000 digits here. That should keep you (or the kids) busy for a while!
Pi Day Activities, Art, Books, and Food!
Here are more fun ways to celebrate Pi Day with your kids!
- Decorate a Pi Tree – free printable
- Read Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi
- Bake a Pi – in a Pi-shaped pan! This Apple Pi Pie is also fun!
- Investigating Pi for Preschoolers
- Draw a Pi Skyline – in case you missed my earlier link to the inspiration for this project.
- Preschool Pi Day Math Fun – with a pie
- Make a Pi Day poster
- Introduction to Pi – a simple visual activity
How are you going to celebrate Pi Day this year?
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MaryAnne is a craft loving educator, musician, photographer, and writer who lives in Silicon Valley with her husband Mike and their four children.
I always forget about this day every year. I love that you celebrate and make it fun!
I love your Pi Day ideas. My son especially loves the Sir Cumference series.
This is a clever take on the Pi skyline activity!! So beautiful on the light table.
Love this activity! I might ask daughter today how she wants to celebrate PI.
That is one complicated number! I used pi a lot for work as a product designer for calculate circumferences and model making. I love the look of your “skyline” and I love that you could see Anna making sense of fractions!
This is a GREAT project and you are right, requires much less patience than our project. My son has an unusual amount of patience for tedious activities (well, my older son anyway!) but this is very doable!
I love your take on the Pi Skyline.
I love Pi day!! This year, we’re doing a Pi-rate treasure hunt. I’ll give a treasure map to the kiddos and let them have fun. The questions will be at marked locations on the map, but helpful clues will be hidden near the questions if they are stuck. I even came up with some questions for the participating parents :-D. I was so excited that it was hard for me to get to sleep last night.
Your Pi-rate party sounds like it will be a lot of fun!
Pi Day is a great way to celebrate math. You have so many fun ways to explore Pi here. Thanks for sharing!
Love all these ideas. Not surprising as a maths geek too. Took a moment to realise our Pi day in the UK is different from yours. Due to date format, so I’ll need to store these ideas away for a bit longer. Thanks for sharing.
Ooh, that gives us a chance to celebrate all over again!
I’ve seen the Pi skyline floating around on FB, and hadn’t really looked at it beyond thinking “That looks really cool.” My kids would love this with their math blocks.