Pi Day

Divide the circumference of a circle by its diameter and you get pie, er... pie! "Pi Day" is one of those funny holidays where the date happens to look like the number – 3.14, or March 14th. Of course, pi is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. It's an irrational number, which means it has an infinite number of digits past the decimal point and cannot be written as an exact fraction. But for the purposes of this song, 3.14 works. And in case your students ask, pi is a letter in the Greek alphabet. It looks sorta like the letter T with two stems: Π See?

John was going for that "Tom-Bodett-we'll-leave-the-light-on-for-ya" vibe with this tune, so it's a bit folksy. (If you don't know who Tom Bodett is, he does commercials for Motel 6. He has a dry wit to his delivery.) This tune swings, so be sure to have your students sing it that way. There is a fiddle playing the melody on the recording to help with that.

We mixed a few different versions of this song to give you options. The one on the recording has a little joke dialog at the end of it, and you'll need a couple of actors to perform it. Our web extras include a full version with no joke at the end, and another dialog version that is a bit more nerdy, where a kid tries to recite pi to several digits and keeps getting shushed. Finally at the end, the kid is allowed to recite pi to the fade. This same effect could be achieved by having the actor recite pi for several digits as they walk off stage. You'll find these extras – including an alternate lyric page – on our web site. (See details on page 63.) To celebrate, your class could have some pie on Pi Day to emphasize the holiday.