Pi Day is March 14 (pi = 3.14...) and is a great time to learn about pi and have some fun. Here are some of the resources we talked about at the meeting. Click on a few links to get some great ideas for celebrating Pi Day at your house!
First, remembering that Pi is the ratio between a circle's circumference and it's diameter (C/D), a great "discovering pi" activity is collecting various circular objects around the house, measuring their circumferences and diameters, doing the division, and seeing that you get the same number for circles of all sizes (except for measurement error, or imperfect circles). A great picture book that introduces pi is "Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi." (http://tinyurl.com/4c7m24h) There is a whole series of "Sir Cumference" books, and while the pictures and stories can be appreciated by young kids, the math content is rich enough for much older children.
The Exploratorium has a great page with lots of fun Pi Day information and activities:
http://www.exploratorium.edu/pi/
Here are a few fun videos about Pi on You Tube - I'm sure you can find more, too!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJJJmQojcLM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqpWETqoD5Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiliHq8phgE&feature=related
Education World has a nice article with plans for a Pi Day party:
http://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/lesson/lesson335.shtml
Pi is an interesting number that shows up in lots of different types of math problems. Wikipedia has a nice article on Pi. It gets quite technical (of course!) but there is some nice info about attempts to calculate it with increasing precision throughout history. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi
Finally, Pi Day falls on Albert Einstein's birthday, another great educational tie-in. Here are a couple of sites with resources for that:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/einstein/
http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/
Most of all, enjoy Pi Day!
