Ultimate Pi Day Party! 3-14-15 9:26:53

Last week, we celebrated the Ultimate Pi Day (3.141592653...) with a Pi Party in the park. We had 20-30 people attend and had so much fun! Here's our Pi(e) spread complete with many homemade and store bought pies.

One of our nerdy attendees made this sign by the pie. Do you get it? Also, our local grocery store got in on the Pi Day fun...notice the price of the mini pie?

We lined the other tables with butcher paper and traced circles for Pi Day Posters and Investigating Pi. One of the attendees decided to reverse my investigating pi lesson to measuring the circumference with a string and seeing how many times she could measure the diameter from the circumference string (a little more than 3). The kids were more excited about the Pi-rate Treasure Hunt! Who can blame them?

Pi-rate booty!

Pi-rate Treasure Hunt:

I printed out an aerial Google Map of the park with clue #1 marked. The park where we had the event had a walking path, so I stuck the clues in obvious places along the path for the problems. Hints were more hidden, so the participants had to actively look for those if they needed the help. The kids had to answer 5 questions (preferably from the same set of questions) to get a prize from the treasure chest.

I had three levels of math problems for the kids to find and solve. I cut and pasted the problems onto colorful 3x5 cards:

Easy (green): Preschool
Medium (orange): k-2 grade
Hard (pink) = 3 grade+

Then I had some problems for adults (yellow) who might have accompanied their kids around. Those were more high school math, up to pre-algebra.

Here are the problems I came up with (note, my goal was to not make anyone cry).

Easy Pi-rate treasure hunt problems
Medium Pi-rate treasure hunt problems
Hard Pi-rate treasure hunt problems
Pi-rate treasure hunt problems for the adults

How did you fare on the Pi-rate Treasure Hunt questions?

How did you celebrate the Ultimate Pi Day??


Just for fun, here's our annual Pi Day Family Photo:

And one of the kids and me:

Previous years' Pi Day Photos.

Pi-rate Treasure Hunt

Guess what?? Pi Day is my favorite nerdy holiday! My favorite activity so far has been celebrating with a Pi Party in the park. We made Pi Day Posters and Investigated Pi (and ate pie, but that's a normal Pi Day activity). Along with that fun, I created a treasure map and some fun math questions and sent the kids on a Pi-rate Treasure Hunt!

I used a screenshot of the park on Google Maps using the satellite feature and marked a path for the treasure hunt. I had five stops along the treasure hunt, each stop had four different levels of math questions. Clues to solving the problems if they needed help were hidden nearby, so they had to look for them if they really wanted the help. The fifth problem was at a treasure chest. After solving that problem, the kids received a small prize (leftover party goodies, like mardi gras beads and silly glasses from years of storage). (Note: edited 2/27/17 to past tense and linked to the math problems).

Easy - 3-5 year olds (preschool)
Medium - 5-7 year olds (k-2nd)
Hard - 7-9 year olds (3-4th)

And just for the adults to play alongside their kiddos:
Adult - Trig and pre-calculus level - brush up on your equations :-)

Happy Almost Pi Day to you!!

Related Post:
Ultimate Pi Party - pictures of our treasure hunt included!