Approximations of π

Well hello there little one! Today, we are going to talk about something called "approximations of π". Pi is a special number that is used in math, and it's super duper important! Pi is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. But sometimes, we need to use pi in our math problems, but it's really hard to remember all the numbers that come after it. So, we use something called an "approximation" to help us.

An approximation is like making a guess or estimate, but it's a really good guess. It's like when you see a picture of a puzzle and you can almost guess what the whole thing looks like when you only see part of it.

Now, there are many ways to make an approximation of pi, but we will talk about the most basic one. Have you ever eaten a pie or a pizza? Well, if you look at the edge of the pie or pizza, it looks like a circle, right? So, what we can do is take a piece of string and wrap it around the edge of the pie or pizza. Then, we mark where the string overlapped and measure how long the string is. We call this length the "circumference". Then, we also measure the length of the pizza or pie from one side to the other through the centre. This is called the "diameter".

After we've measured that, we divide the circumference by the diameter. We might get a number like 3.14. We call this number an "approximation" of pi because it's really close to the actual value of pi, but not exactly the same. The actual value of pi goes on forever and ever after the decimal point.

So, there you have it! We can use a pie or a pizza to help us remember the value of pi, which is pretty cool, right?