Friday, November 12, 2010

Another Leonardo



About 300 years before Leonardo da Vinci, there was another Leonardo making news. He is considered one of the most important mathematicians in the history of the world. His name was Leonardo Fibonacci.

Yesterday in math, I wrote the following number sequence on the board - 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21... and asked the children if they could tell me the pattern. After many incorrect guesses, Arvid became very excited and said, "Oh! I know what is happening! The new number is the previous 2 numbers added together!" We then talked about how Fibonacci numbers appear in nature - pine cones, apple pips, orange sections.

Today, we shared what we learned with the rest of our classmates, and we all made Fibonacci necklaces. For instance, one white bead, one blue bead, 2 green beads, 3 red beads, 5 yellow beads, etc. Perhaps your child will challenge you to figure out their necklace tonight (don't tell them I let the cat out of the bag).

Just look at those faces! Can you tell how excited they were about this project?

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Another wonderful project. Good job.

Anonymous said...

Maddy has been talking about this project for two days! She loved it. She also seemed to really enjoy the composting visit.