As much as I LOVE Pi Day, I've decided that it just falls at a bad time of year. This year, I hoped to do a lot more for Pi Day than I ended up doing.
Pi Day Week ended up looking like this:
Sunday - Daylight Savings Time (Always not fun!)
Monday - Hats On Day Fundraiser & Parent Teacher Conferences 3:30 - 6:30
Tuesday - BLOOD DRIVE that I was in charge of from 9-2 & Parent Teacher Conferences 3:30 - 6:30
Wednesday - Early Pi Day Celebration
Thursday - STEM Day & End of 3rd Nine Weeks
Friday - NO SCHOOL (And Actual Pi Day)
Otherwise known as the week of craziness. I was so busy that week I had doubts that I would actually be able to survive the week. Of course, Spring Break was the week after which gave me a much needed break, but other responsibilities took precedence over Pi Day.
One thing I wished I had had time to do was decorate my room for Pi Day!
I really wanted to make a Pi Day Mini Mural like the one found on this website. Give each student a digit of pi to decorate. Laminate them and hang them up. I even found the perfect place to hang the digits in my classroom - above my wall of windows.
I even went so far as to create a pdf file of the first 100 digits of pi to have my students decorate them. I just never got around to printing them off and giving my students decoration time. Maybe next year!
Still, I thought I should post the file at the end of this post in case anybody else wants to use it in their classroom.
I'd also like to have students assemble a pi chain. Each digit from 0-9 is represented by a different colored loop. The loops are strung together in the order of the digits of pi. This is something that could be kept and added to each year. I read about this here: http://www.ccsdk12.org/
When I was in high school, we celebrated Mole Day. My chemistry teacher gave us a list of 30 or so different ways to celebrate. Each method of celebrating was worth a certain number of points. As an assignment, we had to earn a certain number of points. I remember making a mole out of felt and stuffing it with rice, making a chemistry board game, and decorating a shirt for mole day. It was fun to see everyone's different creations. Some of my students wrote mole jokes. Others performed songs or made comic strips. I've always thought it would be fun to do this with pi day. Students could earn points based on the number of digits memorized, songs performed for the class, links added to the pi chain, making pi jewelry, baking pie for the class, making pi day posters, etc. I think it would be fun to see what different students came up with. Students would be able to show off specific talents in this way. I don't know if it would make more work or less work for me, though.
After seeing Mole Day posters at #EdCampTULSA, I want to celebrate Pi Day in this way even more next year!
If you have trouble accessing the file, send me an e-mail at mathequalslove(at)gmail(dot)com, and I'll gladly attach the file and send it to you.