Pi Day (My Way)

If you don't know March 14th is Pi Day (3.14)!!  For those of you who are not uber math nerds Pi is that weird little Greek letter you had to use when you took high school math to find the Area ("A equals pi r squared") and Circumference ("C equals two r pi").  For some uber math nerds Pi is an obsession.  Back in the 18th and 19th century scientists and mathematicians used to spend their lives calculating this number by hand.

When I worked in Texas Spring Break always fell on Pi Day so I never got the opportunity to celebrate it with my students... then I moved to Korea and our Spring Break didn't happen til April... so that meant PI DAY CELEBRATION!!  Last year I didn't plan anything until it was March and so I didn't get to go too fancy (we got all of the grades to make a number and we photographed it from above and then hung them in the order of pi on the wall in our foyer).

THIS YEAR I WENT BALLS TO THE WALL!!  Back in January I talked with my students and threw out the idea of having a day long Festival of Pi... they loved it... they got to get out of classes for a day.  I then sent my idea up to the headmaster and got the ball rolling.  For the last two months I have been planning activities for our whole school K-12.  Fun Pi related activities including creating a pi chain, reading Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi by Cindy Neuschwander, measuring objects to calculate pi... and that's just for the Elemenatary School kids.  For the big kids they will be teaching some of the ES lessons, have a Pi digit reciting contest, play Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? pi day edition and we have nominated and elected a Pi King and Queen.  We will also have a vote/fundraiser where the students will pay money to vote for the teacher they want to see the Pi King and Queen put a pie in the face.

The day is also Albert Einstein's birthday so we are incorporating that in to the day.  We have posted 155 quotes from Einstein all around the school.  After lunch we are going to have our awards ceremony and a birthday party for Einstein.  At 1:59 (3.14 159) we will be singing Happy Birthday to Dr. Einstein and before that two students will be narrating a slide show about his life.  We will end the day by eating birthday Pie.

I am super excited.  The students have been coming to my room whenever they have a minute to help me out and they have been making the most awesome posters.  I have included some of their great artwork... as well as the t-shirt design from one of the students... because what school event would be complete without a t-shirt?