How to Throw the Ultimate Homeschool Pi Day Party

March 14 is Pi Day — and celebrating this mathematical constant makes a fun family party, any way you slice it.

Pi Day was one of the very first homeschool holidays we celebrated together — and like creating our first successful batch of oobleck, celebrating Pi Day was one of the things that made me feel like a “real” homeschooler. As the kids got older, our celebrations got wilder and more creative, and now I can’t imagine not throwing a little homeschool shindig to celebrate March 14 (3.14, the rounded-off version of pi). Here are some of our favorite Pi Day fun ideas:

DO THIS

  • Turn your wall clock into a pi clock by translating the hours into radians. (You can use the pi clock by SB Crafts as a model if you want to get fancy with your equations.)

  • Put your pi skills to the test with Buffon’s Needle, a geometrical probability problem that dates back to 1777. It involves dropping a needle onto a sheet of lined paper and determining the probability of the needle crossing one of the lines on the page — an answer that’s directly related to pi. The Mathematics, Science, and Technology Education (MSTE) division of the College of Education at the University of Illinois has a cool simulation that walks you through the problem.

  • Take the Pi Day Challenge. Matthew Plummer, a former math teacher at Boston’s Hanover High School, likes celebrating Pi Day so much that he created a delightful series of online pi puzzles — some of which call for mathematical solutions, some for research, and some for critical thinking.

  • Write a Pilish — a poem based on the successive digits of pi. The number of the letters in each word of your poem should equal the corresponding digit of pi: so, the first word would have three letters, the second one, the third four, and so on.

READ THIS

WEAR THIS

  • The Einstein Look-a-Like competition is a beloved part of Princeton University’s annual Pi Day celebration, so join the festivities by getting dressed in your Einstein-ian best.

EAT THIS

  • Pie, of course!

Amy Sharony

Amy Sharony is the founder and editor-in-chief of home | school | life magazine. She's a pretty nice person until someone starts pluralizing things with apostrophes, but then all bets are off.

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