Pi Day for Older Kids – Lesson Plans

I recently shared a few ideas for celebrating Pi Day with younger kids, but of course it’s also fun to do Pi Day with kids who are old enough to know what pi actually is.

You could have a pie making (or eating!) contest with older kids to celebrate, or have them write about their favorite kind of pie (pizza or otherwise).

Since numerical pi is kind of a code, you can make bracelets or beaded projects using the numbers of pi with beads in different colors to correspond to each number (so every 1 is green, every 2 is blue, for example) or make it simpler with one color for odd numbers and one for even numbers. Both are shown in this activity from Pink Stripey Socks.

You could also do the same color with different numbers of beads for each digit, for example you start with three beads of one color, then one of a different color, then four of another color and so on. Our Family Code has an example of this done in a necklace to 50 digits.

That post has more great pi related ideas you can do, including a color wheel activity, a graphing mosaic, perler bead suncatchers and more.

Rock Your Homeschool has a good collection of Pi Day printables for older kids, which includes a word search, coloring pages, a pie baking math activity, a page of pies to measure and a chart for measuring your own circular things, among other activities.

Finally, try your hand at some Pi-lish! This isn’t a real language but a way of writing or speaking where the words correspond to the digit in pi. So a sentence written in Pi-lish would start with a three-letter word, then a one-letter word, then four, then one, then five and so on. Royal Baloo has printables for practicing your Pi-lish and ultimately writing a poem in this style.

[Photo: Pink Stripey Socks.]

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Perler Bead Projects for Kids

The celebration of Our Lady of Guadalupe is important throughout Mexico and other parts of the world. Her feast day is Dec. 12, and the celebrations honoring her appearance to Juan Diego in 1531 begin a few days before that.

Whether you celebrate yourself or just want to share about the celebration at home or in your classroom, Las Mañanitas: The Beautiful Celebration of Our Lady of Guadalupe is a good place to start. The book, by Ernesto Joel Vega Rosales and Jeanette Gonzalez Seneviratne, with illustrations by Dana Sanmar, tells the story of a family’s celebration of the feast day in both English and Spanish.

They prepare with a novena, which is nine days of prayers and preparations. The children, Lucia and Pablo, are given special outfits made by their grandmother that look like what Juan Diego might have worn when he saw Our Lady. The book describes the prayers that are made each day, such as a prayer for respect for life, for families and for the indigenous people of the Americas, to name a few.

As told in the book, Juan Diego was a native Mexican born near modern day Mexico City. His given name was Cuaauhtlatoatzin, which means “He who speaks like an eagle.” When he converted to Christianity his name was changed to Juan Diego, and as he walked to church he passed a hill called Tepeyac. One day he heard the birds singing especially beautifully and a voice called him to go to the top of the hill.

There he saw Our Lady of Guadalupe, who asked him to tell the bishop she wanted a chapel built in her name at the foot of the hill. The bishop asked for a sign that Juan Diego really saw her, and later she had him collect flowers that she blessed and take them to the bishop. When Juan Diego dropped the flowers, an image of Our Lady could be seen on his cloak, which is still on display in her basilica to this day.

The feast day is celebrated as mañanitas, which includes singing, indigenous music and dancing, and children presenting flowers to Our Lady. Juan Diego is remembered today as being humble, brave and faithful, and was the first indigenous American made a saint.

The book is colorful and tells the story in a clear way, and it’s fun to have it both in English and Spanish if you teach Spanish or speak Spanish at home or in the classroom. It’s a great way to learn the basics of the celebration and the story of Juan Diego and why he is still remembered today.

About the book: 40 pages, paperback, published 2024 by Loyola Press. Suggested retail price $14.99.

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