A Day of Pi

It was all about pie. Or pi. Or both.

Kids created pi bracelets and made pi paper chains, wrote pi poetry, put on pi temporary tattoos and decorated cards for their favorite math teachers. They ended the day by--what else?--eating pie.

About 190 students and teachers in sixth-grade at Frederick School learned about pi, a never-ending decimal number that is approximately equal to 3.14159265... and is commonly abbreviated as 3.14. To tie into pi, the lessons were held on March 14 (3/14), which was also appropriately enough, mathemathical genius Albert Einstein's birthday.

To bring the abstract concept of pi to life, sixth-grade teacher Cherie Jacobs said she wanted to do something different.

"It's fun to pay attention to a day of math," Jacobs said. "The students don't even realize they are learning math right now but they are. Having enjoyment with math is key."

There were 11 different stations about pi that the children visited. At one, they made bracelets with the first 100 digits of pi, using color-coded beads.

Emma Wren, 12, Julia amidei, 12, Stephany Madrid, 11 and Kerry Obis, 12, worked together creating the pi bracelets.

"It's fun because you get to use all of the different colors," said Wren.

Over at the card decorating table, 12-year-old buddies Cam Detweiler and Sam Sandoval created cards for Miss Johnson, their sixth-grade math teacher.

"She's my favorite," said Detweiler. "She's nice and she's patient."

"Yeah, she's really patient," Sandoval agreed, adding that the best part of pi day was getting to eat pie at the end of it all.

"We're just having fun," he said.

Part of the fun was getting temporary tattoos with the symbol of pi. Kids eagerly put the tattoos on their cheeks, their hands or their arms.

Samantha Martinez, 12, Sophia Deligiannis, 12 and Alexis Darnall, 12, all got tattoos and helped make a long paper pi chain to hang in the hallways.

"I liked making the card for my math teacher and making the bracelets the best," said Darnall. "That was fun because you could decorate them however you wanted."

Mitchell Hinkson, 11, got creative with the location of his pi tattoo. Hinkson put the tattoo on this lips to make a very unique moustache.

"All of this stuff is pretty awesome," he said, smiling, "but I'm just waiting for pie!"