We celebrate Pi Day at the secondary school I work at so I thought it would be fun to celebrate Pi Day at home with my children this year. Pi Day is celebrated on March 14th, it’s an annual celebration of the mathematical sign pi. Founded in 1988 by physicist Larry Shaw, March 14th was selected because the numerical date (3.14) represents the first three digits of pi, it also happens to be Albert Einstein’s birthday.

What is Pi?

pi—which is written as the Greek letter for p, or π—is the ratio of the circumference of any circle to the diameter of that circle.

In decimal form, the value of pi is approximately 3.14.

Pi Day hama bead necklace

Both my children knew what Pi meant and when they got home from school I had our box of hama beads out, along with 10 small pots and a print out of the first fifty numbers of pi – 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510.

We talked about how we could make our own colourful hama bead necklace using the first fifty numbers of pi. First we separated out ten different colours, one for each number between 0 and 9. We wrote the numbers on a piece of paper so we didn’t get confused!

Then the children decided how they wanted to make their hama bead necklace. Of course they both chose different ways! My son wanted to make his necklace with one bead to represent each number. My daughter wanted to use the actual number of beads for each number.

I threaded a length of embroidery thread and they were both happy to thread the needle through the beads, carefully counting as they went. We added a larger bead for the decimal point. They both made their own pi day hama bead necklaces and I love that they made their own ideas.

My son was able to add all fifty beads to make his necklace, whilst my daughter began to lose patience with her long necklace. She gave up threading but her necklace was still long enough. We tied a knot in the end of both necklaces so their Pi Day hama bead necklaces can be worn.