Celebrating Pi Day

I (Jessica) have been teaching math to a small class of 6th-grade missionary kids for the past month.  Amy Bemm had been teaching the class, but was eager to pass it off to me since it wasn't her field of expertise.  She has since started a little "pre-school" class for Elise, Anna Fader, and two other missionary kids that meets at the same time.

As some of you know, March 14th is "Pi Day".  (Pi is approximately equal to 3.14 for the non-math savvy out there.)  Since this year's "Pi Day" fell on a Sunday, we were forced to celebrate on Monday.  Nevertheless, the kids were eager to make a special event out of it.  During class time, each of the kids presented their "Pi Projects" which were done on circles split into quarters -- the history of pi, the uses of pi, the digits of pi, and interesting facts about pi.  Then, we did a little activity exploring the circumference and diameter of various sized circles (the ratio of C/d should equal pi).

My little math geniuses (from left to right):  Peter, Joel, David, & Abby
P.S.  In case you were wondering, Joel & David's projects were done on circles, they just didn't cut them out! :)

During the lunch hour, we had a "Pi Party", complete with pizza pie, coconut cream pie, and pretzels in the shape of pi.  The day brought much joy to the math nerd in me!  

For the fellow math nerds, here are a few interesting facts about pi that my students discovered:
*Pi Day is also Albert Einstein's birthday.
*If you were to print a billion decimals of pi in ordinary font, it would stretch from NYC to Kansas.
*As of January 2010, 2.7 trillion digits of pi have been calculated.
*Akira Haraguchi of Japan holds the unofficial record of memorizing 100,000 digits of pi.
*There are no zeros in the first 31 digits of pi.
Disclaimer:  These facts have not yet been verified by the teacher! :)