Pi Day Activity~ Math Art

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We love to celebrate silly and quirky holidays around here. A fun holiday for teachers and homeschoolers is Pi Day on March 14th or 3-14. Today I have a fun Pi day activity you can do with the kids you teach. This one combines math and art into a beautiful design.

What is Pi Day?

As I mentioned, Pi Day is on March 14 th (3-14). Why? Because the number that represents Pi is 3.14. So each year on March 14th, math enthusiasts, teachers and other people who like geeky things like this celebrate Pi!

People celebrate it by making pies, or eating pizza, and by doing different math games and activities related to pi. You will find pizza places with Pi Day deals and you will see all kinds of fun Pi Day activities, memes and jokes around the web. See some of our other Pi Day Activities: Pi Day Puzzle & Making and Apple Pie on Pi Day. 

What is Pi?

When you divide the circumference of a circle by its diameter you get a number that is called Pi. It is also represented by the Greek symbol π.

(Just a little FYI, you can type the Pi symbol on a Mac by typing Option and the letter P at the same time. For Windows it is 03C0, Alt+X. I just learned that!)

Pi is 3.14 when rounded to 2 decimal places, but it really has an infinitely long string of decimal numbers. For this art project you will use the numbers of Pi to create a beautiful, circular piece of art!

How To Do This Math + Art Pi Day Activity

Math Topics Involved in This Project: Pi, Diameter of a circle, Counting, Measurement

This fun Pi Day activity can be done for many different grade levels. If you are celebrating Pi Day in your classroom or homeschool, be sure to add this one to your lesson plan.

Supplies Needed:

Ruler

Large piece of paper or poster board

Ruler

Pen

Markers or colored pencils

Start by drawing a circle in the center of your paper or poster. You can do that by tracing a bowl or using a compass.

Choose a point on your circle to start. You will start the circle with the first number of pi, 3. Draw a line three inches long coming out from that point. Make another line coming out from the same point, but angled slightly to make a ray.

Make another point about 1/4 to 1/2 an inch apart from the first point.

The size of your circle does not matter. You can make it larger or smaller depending on the type of paper you use for this project.

I did ours on a large paper roll, however if you are doing it on a smaller scale, use centimeters to measure your lines so they will fit on the paper.

Continue drawing lines in the same fashion going around the entire circle with all of the digits of pi. The length of each line will differ based on what number it is. Fill the entire circle in this same way.

Next, color each ray a different color based on the number it represents. For instance all of the threes were colored in the same color, all of the twos were the same color, and so on.

Now be sure to figure out the circumference and diameter of the circle you drew!

Digits of Pi to the 45th Decimal Place:  3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169339

This activity was originally created for my book Math Art and Drawing Games for Kids. However this project did not make the cut due to space issues. So now, I get to share the awesomeness here with you!

I loved creating this Pi Day Math Art project. It was actually one of my favorites! I was really excited for Pi Day to start getting close so I could share this post with you guys. 🙂

Be sure to grab my Pi Day puzzle, too!