Physicist Larry Shaw began celebrating Pi Day on March 14, 1988, at the San Francisco Exploratorium. He chose the date 3/14 because it corresponds to the first three digits of pi, 3.14. You can bring the fun of this holiday into your classroom with Pi Day math activities for all grades and even a few cross-curricular lessons that help you recognize the day in other classes.

• 4 fun Pi Day math activities
• Create engaging, interactive Pi Day math activities with Formative

[4 fun Pi Day math activities](id-activity)

Get your students engaged in this quirky holiday with some fun and puzzling Pi Day math activities:

1. Take the Pi Day challenge

Have students take the Pi Day challenge to test their knowledge of the constant pi, mathematical formulas, and mathematicians who contributed to our understanding of pi.

If you have Newsela Social Studies, you can share corresponding articles to help students build background knowledge on these topics. Not a Newsela customer yet? Sign up for Newsela Lite for free to start your 45-day trial!

2. Play Simon with pi’s digits

Play a Pi Day memorization game by asking students to memorize, recite, and echo the digits of pi. Have students play with partners, in small groups, or as a whole class. Share your class’s high score with us in the Newselaverse!

3. Teach students about the relationship between pi and circles

For pre-algebra and upper-level math students, present a complete lesson on how pi helps us calculate the properties of circles. It includes embedded videos, resource links, and potential printable resources.

4. Add a Pi Day bell ringer to your ELA classes

Bring Pi Day activities into classrooms other than math with an ELA bell ringer activity. Students can read a short passage on Pi Day and use editing marks to correct mistakes. Students can look for capitalization, punctuation, spelling, and grammar errors.

[Create engaging, interactive Pi Day math activities with Formative](id-tips)

Whether you teach math all year long or want to add an assignment to spice up your Pi Day activities in another subject, you can create and assign your own interactive math activities on Formative. By using all of the tool’s amazing math features, you can help students practice using pi and assess what they’ve learned:

Have students show their work on math problems

Toggle on the “show your work” setting for any Formative activity you create for your math class. This setting allows students to show all the steps to solve each problem within the program. Teachers can then follow a student’s thought process while solving the problem, like using pi to find the circumference of a circle, and even watch them work on it in real time and provide support and guidance in the moment!

Use Formative’s built-in math keyboard and calculators for easy problem-solving

Solving problems in Formative is even more accessible thanks to the built-in math keyboard that you can add to any activity. It allows students to easily type numbers, equations, and even symbols like pi. Plus, teachers with Paid Teacher or School and District plans can let students access basic, scientific, and graphing calculators from right within their assignments to solve problems without leaving Formative.

Browse the Formative library to find interactive math activities created by other educators

Need help to kickstart your Pi Day lessons? Visit the Formative shared library to browse community-generated quizzes, bell ringers, and other formative assessments for all grade levels. Use the search feature and filters to find ones that meet your needs and state standards.

Calculate what else Formative can do in the classroom

Creating interactive math activities for your classroom isn’t the only thing you can do with Formative! Discover all Formative has to offer for daily instruction, departmental collaboration, and district-wide common assessment across science, ELA, social studies, world language, and many more subjects!