Why You Should Celebrate Pi Day in Your Classroom!

That’s it. I’m bringing back holiday celebrations into the classrooms. And when I say holidays, I really mean Pi Day. I am absolutely passionate about Pi Day. I am so obsessed I don’t realize that other people do not feel the same way about it and some people don’t even know what Pi Day is! Can you believe that there are people in the world who don’t know about Pi Day? We need to inform them! Pi Day is that magical day where math geeks and pie enthusiasts unite and celebrate the wonders and deliciousness of all things circular with a main focus on FOOD! Also, Pi Day is one of my favorites because there are so many educational activities you can do with your students!

I must admit, my main drive to bring this Pi Day holiday into light is because of food. This is important because I’m sure many of your students also love food. Pi Day is all about the pies. Apple pie, Shepard’s pie, even Spinach pie if you’re so inclined. But the best type of pie has got to be everyone’s favorite, the pizza pie. Pizza is crucial. Pizza is magic. Pizza makes your lesson important.

If you teach math, then you know that teaching math is difficult. There is a strict and packed curriculum you have to follow and not much room to stray from the curriculum. Most of the curriculum is dry and students find it hard to relate. What if you can teach a lesson that resonates so deeply that your students will remember the concepts for the rest of their lives (and not give it back to you after they take their tests)? A break in routine is just what you need to get your students’ attention. Save your area and circumference of circles lesson for that special time (March 14th)! Or you can use Pi Day as an opportunity to review the concepts surrounding circles.

The image of the pizza is guaranteed to help. In the younger grades, you can introduce geometric concepts. A slice of pizza is like a triangle, but when you put it together, it becomes a circle! Fractions will be so much easier to understand with pizza! All of a sudden, your entire class will understand what a quarter looks like because that is the part covered in pepperoni! If you’re feeling ambitious, you can make a pizza with your students (I have a recipe) and scale the ingredients up to feed the entire class in a proportion lesson.

What if you teach something else? Well, have you ever wondered about what pizza does to your brain? A quick science lesson will show your students the chemical reaction that goes on inside the making of a pizza and what it does inside your body. (Spoiler alert: the tomato sauce and cheese is an addictive combination.) You can talk about the nutritional value of a pizza, or how yeast releases gasses to make the crust rise. Who doesn’t like to talk about releasing gas?

Don’t get me started about Art. There are SO MANY Pi Day Art activities you can do with your students. Decorate your classroom with Pi Day artwork as beautiful as the number Pi itself! I can go on and on about how magical Pi is (never-ending, just like the decimal digits of Pi). I can be quite irrational about the subject too! (I have WAAAY more Pi puns up my sleeve!)

You can discover the history of how pizza came to be in a social studies lesson. I’m not a Language Arts teacher, but I’m sure you can have your students write an essay about why pizza is the best food on earth. I even came up with a quick poem created by words with the same length of the digits of Pi (3.1415926…). It goes like this:

“Pie. I love a treat, delicious to anyone.”

Okay, so it’s not a particularly long poem, or a good one, but I tried. Your students will probably do better than me. Join forces with your team teachers and make an interdisciplinary Pi Day lesson, complete with a pizza party! Barring any major food allergies, you might even be able to bring in some dessert pies! I remember when my co-teacher brought in a pie made in a square pan. When asked about that, she told our students “Oh! I heard that pies are square!” Get it! Pi r squared?! The area of a circle formula was one that our students remembered that year—because of that one square pie.

Isn’t it worth it to celebrate some things in the classroom? I know there isn’t that much time to take out of our busy schedules, but I would argue that lessons like these—fun, relatable, thinking out of the (pizza) box lessons—are way more memorable that anything they can get from a textbook or practice test. I know I’ll be celebrating Pi Day this year. Will you?

P.S. If you need an educational Pi Day activity, I have a FREEBIE!