Pi Day Activities

 If you ask anyone I know they will say that my favorite holiday is hands-down Pi day. I love the last minute shopping at a grocery store filled with other math teachers. I love the excitement from the students. I love the confusion for the younger students about what this mysterious "Pi" is. And of course, I love the food. Every year, I try to find the best activities for students to celebrate pi. Below are the list of my favorite.


1. Pi Chain

This is an activity that can be done through out the day. I had my students look up the digits of pi. Then using specific colors (red for prime, yellow for composite, brown for square) have the students create a chain from one end of the classroom to the other. This is a great small group activity because the students really have to communicate with each other. It does get boring quickly though, so either do it in 1 swoop or slow increments spread out.

2. Pi Circle
Have the students count how many times the numbers of Pi appear, then calculate the percentage to create a circle graph. This reviewed 3 standards with 1 activity. The students were learning about circle graphs at the time, and they were able to practice fraction, decimal, and percent along with pi.

3. Pi Posters
For this activity, I had different stations around the room. The students were able to access markers, colored pencils, glitter, string, beads, etc. anything to create their pi poster. They then had to present it to the class.

4. Pi Team Costumes
This is the 1st year I did it, but it won't be my last. This activity did create a HUGE mess and took a lot longer then I thought it would. I also didn't do a good job of structuring it. I divided the kids up into teams and told them they had 20 minutes to create a costume about pi. They could do whatever they wanted and use any of the materials that were available, but their costume has to be about pi! Some groups came up with great costumes, others just did 3.14. Next year, I will show pictures of different ideas and then have them compete to see who could create the best.

5. Pi Collage
The students drew different colored circles using a protractor. They then had to calculate the area and circumference of each circle before they could decorate it. For my advanced math students I had them calculate the triangles that were created when circles crossed each other.  I forgot to take pictures of this activity but I found a picture that shows what I mean.

100 days Fraction, Decimal, and Percent Activity

For the 100 days of School, our math specialist provided this art integration activity from one of her many curriculum books. The activity has the students find the fraction, decimal, and percent of 100 pieces. Now, I know what you are thinking...100 tiny pieces + messy 6th graders = nightmare.

When I first saw the activity, the math specialist talked about having the students cut out the 100 pieces, and providing 10 different colors and how "of course this is easy to do in the hour time you are given." Needless to say, I was not excited about these instructions. However, the activity sounded like a good one that just needed some modifications.

So instead of having the kids cut out the pieces, we (an amazing special ed IA and a room mom) pre-cut 100 pieces out of 5 different colors. In order to make our lives easier we gave each kid the same amount of colors, however we had them mix and match on the 100 days to make sure they still had 100 pieces but different quantities.  To make it more challenging for those kids that were ready for it, I took away some pieces or added some in order to make the fractions harder.

After the students calculated the F.D.P. and I checked over it, we had the students create a mosaic of their choice.

Even with all these modifications, the students still DID NOT finish in 1 hour. However, we did spend 15 minutes on a morning problem so I only gave them about 45 minutes to complete the activity. So I had the students take home the art projects and finish gluing. Unfortunately, I did not get pictures of the completed product.

Can you tell this is flappy bird?