Here’s a real tragedy for you—this year Pi Day fell during spring break. This was quite disappointing to my nerdlings, but fortunately my son’s math teacher recognized it for the tragedy that it was, and deemed the first day back to the school the Official Pi Day Celebration.
They celebrated with pie, of course. Here’s our contribution (click to embiggen) to the festivities; it’s a chocolate cookie crust filled with chocolate pudding, cherry pie filling, and whipped topping. (Mmmmm, Pi Sugar Rush!) Fueled by pie, Monkey won the day’s pi recitation contest by rattling off 54 digits before succumbing to a complete sugar coma.
I hope this is the sort of thing he’ll think of when he reflects on his childhood, someday. I hope he remembers the whipped cream and licking the beaters and winning a set of markers from his math teacher, and time softens the hard edges of the rest of it.
Happy Love Thursday, everyone. (Bonus pro tip fo the day: When in doubt, add more sprinkles.)
I find my Aspie seems to remember things as HE interprets them, and often, that is through some sort of miraculous rainbow spectacles that paint everything in hues of awesome.
I LOVE that Monkey could recite 54 digits of pi. That. is. awesome!
That is a beautifully shaped pi-symbol-made-out-of-sprinkles right there!
Go, Monkey! That’s an impressive feat!
And the Pi pie looks fab!
That’s my favorite ‘pi’ recipe, by the way. Mmmmmmmm. 54 digits?!?! How awesome!
I’m trying to memorize Pi to 20 digits. I feel it is something I should know and 20 seemed like a good round number. I think your son, however, has set the bar a little higher. This could take me awhile. *sigh*
I’m not even sure I had heard of Pi at that age (though I’m probably not remembering correctly). So I’m doubly impressed.
I take it back, I just realized Monkey is older than I thought he was so I probably had heard of Pi by then.
We decided that Pi day could be celebrated any day after 3/14 because I couldn’t get the pie out of the oven before the kids bedtimes. (Apple pies always take much longer to cook than I think they should!)
The thing I love about pi day is that you get to look like a hero for serving pie! for no reason! (And did you know you can celebrate 2x pi day on 6/28 with 2 pies? My kids wrote in on the calendar just so I’d know.)
My younger nerdling can’t wait for 2015 – so we can celebrate pi day on 3/14/15 (and then he will probably say with rounding 3/14/16 is just as good). The older nerd was disappointed that he didn’t have math class on pi day (they are on a odd/even block schedule), but then quite happy to discover that the whole nerd school celebrated at lunch with many pies.
We had spinach and sausage pi for dinner and then pumpkin pi for dessert. Happy nerdlets!
Sprinkles. Got it.
(and go, Monkey!)
Love it!
My 4th grade daughter’s class celebrated Pi Day too. Her friend won the prize by memorizing 85 of the Pi digits!! He won a pie..of course :)
Good job, Monkey! Also, that pi(e) looks wonderful.
Walkingborder (Karen),
Try:
Sir, I send a rhyme excelling
in sacred truth and rigid spelling
numerical sprites elucidate
for me the lexicon’s dull weight
If nature gain, not you complain
Tho’ Dr. Johnson fulminate.
Counting up the letters in each word, each word represents a digit of pi. (“Sir” = 3, “I” = 1, “send” = 4, etc.) This will get you up to 30 decimal digits. There’s a 75-digit one that you can see here (starts with “now I defy a tenet gallantly”). People who are both math AND word nerds might enjoy the varied piphilologic examples.
Did you know MIT gave the class of ’15 their official notices of acceptance on 3/14 this year, at exactly 9:26?
Because of course, as Monkey could tell you, pi is 3.1415926…. :-D
I love your Pi pie, and your little nerdlings. And isn’t “more sprinkles” the answer to all of life’s little dilemmas?
I was thinking, Mir is a day early for Love Thursday…um, except it IS Thursday. What the heck happened?! Geez. I’m sure Monkey will remember the great things about growing up. And Pi(e) day has to be one of them.
I bow down to Monkey and @Sanna – because good lord how I love me some fellow nerdlings. :)
Also? I wonder how many times the teacher let the students rattle on and on even they got a few digits wrong because she was chowing down on some extra pi. Not that…I would have that…or anything. Um. Riiiight.
3.14159
A slice of Pi is mighty fine
My 4th grader was encouraged to bring a pie to school on Pi Day, but I couldn’t imagine how it would survive the bus ride so I didn’t send one. None of his classmates brought one either, but we did have individual tarts from the farmers market after dinner that night.
So I’d never heard of this holiday until this year and suddenly I was seeing references to it everywhere. How did it originate?
And 54 digits? Wow.
BTW, my nerdling was disappointed that we had the pie after dinner and not at 1:59.
Mir, that is awesome, your kids are so smart! And your readers are, too. I work at NASA, although I don’t use pi in my particular work, so I didn’t even know the 3.14 part. I LOSE!! But I do know that 1 inch = 2.54 centimeters! *cricket….cricket…* LOL!
I don’t think I can even give you an intelligent description of what Pi is. I think I’m allergic to math, actually. So, I am mightily impressed with the Pi abilities of your math nerdlings.
and now I’ll just write down t e ingredients to that Pie recipe, because THAT is something I can handle very well. :-)
That is a seriously impressive digit count! The nerdliest thing I knew in grade school was how to spell antidosestablishmentarianism. I still recite it with the same cadence too haha. Now I want to challenge myself to learn more digits of pi, I’m so impressed by young Monkey! Happy belated pi day to you an your geniusy little family!
54 digits of pi? That is really impressive. Nicely done. Very cool for the teacher to celebrate!
But what I want to talk about here is chocolate with cherry with whipped topping. Um, that sounds really, really good.
I, too, am allergic to math. My husband does the math and I do the spelling. I am not allergic to pie, though. We will have to celebrate Pi day next year, for sure. And toast Monkey for knowing 54 digits of Pi. Holy Cow! And I thought I was special for being able to spell Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious ! Guess not- I hand my trophy over to Monkey. And to you for your really good Pi(e) recipe.
I am blown away by the impressive nerdliness of the comments here, as well as the post. And am contemplating the word-nerd strategy of learning the digits of pi past 3.14159.
Way to go, Monkey! I expect 100 digits of pi for next year.
This pi day, I missed working in tech. My last year at EarthLink, we had a company wide party at 1:59, with pie for all.
I thought living in Silicon Valley & all, that my kids were nerdlings… I think I might be wrong after reading all your comments. Of course, they’re only 7 & 4, so I’m not really sure what age they learn about pi, but I do think it’s at least another year.
They do know MUCH about piE! And make it monthly or so w/Daddy (usually Apple, but sometimes berry or peach.) I used to make pies, but the demand got too high, so I told them to make their own. Now that I know they can…. They also know, baking/cooking is chemistry, and Daddy is a scientist so….there’s still hope for them.
Mommy, worked in marketing communications for many years BK (before kids,) primarily in Semiconductor, so while not a science nerdling in pure respect, I’m actually really good at translating nerd to regular language & back. ;-)
When come, bring PI!
Pi Day! Love it. I feel so much smarter just knowing this day exists.
So happy Monkey had some joy today!! About time!
Ah chocolate pi with extra sprinkles, so much for my butt and diet. Yummm.
My British husband informs me European Pi Day is July 22. Which is written 22/7. 22 over 7. Approximation of Pi day he says. I say it must ice cream Pi day cause I’m not baking in July.
If you put all those ingredients together in two 9×9 pans, you could say your pi are squared…
And this is one of the best New Yorker cartoons ever:
http://www.cartoonbank.com/2000/pi-what-squared-long-john-you-should-be-able-to-get-this/invt/119610/
Crap…I have a pretty strong will to resist tearing up for many things I see on the internet but the thought that a child has to try to remember the good times of childhood is the kind of thing that makes me cry.
I know your family is working so very hard to make monkey’s life better (and by better, I mean easier for him, not that he is anything less than a perfect little monkey the way he is today) so I think I will say an extra little prayer to see if we can not make sure monkey remembers this and oh so many more moments like this and the blessing of time will lessen the memories of the tougher times.
Love is sweet and much more…
I’d never heard of Pi day (I’m soooo not a maths person…) but it seems to be quite a big thing from what I’ve seen this year…
I’m assuming you and your cute little nerdlets have seen this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kb2YWuZtNcM – a Rebecca Black parody, “Pi Day” (of course ;-)))