Happy Pi Day! Here are 10 ways to show your appreciation for everyone’s favorite irrational number on March 14^th:

1.Make art 

Create a , , or using the digits of pi – or use your imagination to come up with your own creation

2. Memorize it

is helpful if you’d like to learn more digits of pi – the most ever memorized by one person is 67,890! It took Chao Lu 24 hours and 4 minutes to recite with no breaks.

3. Record a video

Educate others by creating and editing a video like that shows off pi’s irrational nature and integrates math, design, and technology into one creative product.

4. Learn something new

Expand your pi day knowledge by learning about or with the .

5. Listen to (or compose!) music

The video demonstrates pi’s melody on a variety of instruments. Sit back and enjoy the harmonies or think of a new way to turn pi into melody using your own musical talents!

6. Read a story

is book two in the Sir Cumference Series, recommended for ages 8-12. In this installment, Radius must solve a math riddle in order to reverse Sir Cumference being changed into a fire-breathing dragon!

7. Write a poem

Similar in basic structure to a haiku, a “Pi-ku” has three lines of poetry: the first is three syllables, the second is one syllable, and the third is four syllables. provides more information and examples to get you started!

8. Bake something tasty

What better way to learn than by making something you can eat? Browse for a delicious pie, pizza, or other circular food recipe and then try to hold off on eating it long enough to calculate its area using pi! Remember, the area of a circle can be calculated using A = Ď€r² where r is the radius.

9. Sing a song

Math Geek Mama shares a free downloadable with songs set to the familiar tunes of Jingle Bells, Happy Birthday, and more!

10. Prove it!

How did Archimedes discover pi in the first place? Test pi with or read this of its existence.

What did we miss? Comment with other ideas and if you share any of your Pi Day festivities, be sure to tag us!

An article regarding hands-on learning in math noted:

“The more avenues there are to receive data through the senses, the more connections the brain can make. The more connections that are made, the better a learner can understand a new idea. This holds not only for primary age learners, but through adulthood. All students need to approach the learning of mathematics by actively doing mathematics.”

Examples included physically measuring objects, collecting data and handling geometric objects at all stages. Experiencing lessons beyond paper or lectures deepens students’ understanding of a concept and serves those who are more tactile learners.

In fact, a found notable differences in brain function between those who physically experienced math and science concepts. When thinking about concepts during a test, hands-on students had a higher rate of activity in the sensory and motor-related parts of their brain, leading to better memory.

These methods don’t just hold true for college students. Eighth-graders in a who were assigned to build a water purification device in their science class scored an average of 20% higher on the unit test than those taught simply through lectures and text-book readings. The hands-on students worked in groups of three or four to engineer a water-purification device while the teacher walked around the classroom discussing the scientific principles of water-purification and asking individual groups questions about the principles behind their device. Once completed, students tested their devices using water from a local river to see if it had become drinkable.

While none of this research serves as impetus to drop the traditional methods of classroom instruction (students do, in fact, need to learn the fundamentals of a material before starting hands-on projects), it does give solid evidence of the benefits of mixing hands-on learning into traditional classroom learning. Integrating hands-on activities and experiments into classroom instruction helps students remember concepts and perform better on tests, in addition to aiding in long-term retention of the material. Perhaps it may also strike up an interest in science or math that a student would not otherwise realize.