26th September International Rabbit Day

International Rabbit Day is celebrated on the  fourth Saturday of September each year. This day promotes the protection and welfare of both domestic and wild rabbits. Rabbits are considered pests in Australia as they have done so much damage to indigenous fauna's habitats, but it is nice to see that they do have a day of their own that has nothing to do with Easter. There are some wonderful books worth sharing too because books like these do not have a rush on borrowing at Easter. Where the rabbit in a story is not a toy, it is often adventurous just like Peter Rabbit in Beatrix Potter's classic.

See 

• The Wonderful Habits of Rabbits  by Douglas Florian and Sonia Sanchez. This is one long poem that begins

 ' The habits of rabbits are many, not few,

 with plenty of things that they love to do!'

• The Rabbit Problem  by Emily Gravett. This beautiful book follows a pair of rabbits through the year as they cope with their ever expanding brood. It is also a good introduction to Fibonacci and his number sequence!

• All Because of Jackson by Dick King Smith. Jackson, a rabbit wants to see the world so he stows away on a ship hoping to have adventures. This is just the way rabbits came to be in Australia!

• Tom Crean's Rabbit  by  Meredith Hooper and Bert Kitchen.  This is a true story about a rabbit that went to Antarctica with the Scott expedition!

• The Great Rabbit Chase by Freya Blackwood. This is the story of a mother and daughter who chase their escaped rabbit through the streets of town. Mum is wrapped in towel! Kindergarten love this story.

• One Runaway Rabbit  by David Metzenthen and Mairead Murphy. This too is a chase, but this time a fox is chasing the rabbit.

• The Black Rabbit by Philippa Leathers. This time a rabbit is trying to escape from the 'big black rabbit'. Children love to be in 'on the secret' when you read books like this where the big black rabbit is in fact a shadow.

5th August Fibonacci Day

Today is August, 5th 2013 which will be written on many school notebooks today as 5-8-13. This sequence of numbers is part of the Fibonacci sequence where the sum of the first two numbers adds to make the third number. The next Fibonacci Day would not occur till 8-13-21 and as we do not have thirteen months in a year it will not occur. How special then is today?

The 23rd November is often used to celebrate Fibonacci Day, but today is more special. Who was Fibonacci?  He was Leonardo da Pisa, born in Pisa in 1175AD, the son of a merchant who travelled widely as a customs officer in North Africa. He used the knowledge he gained on his travels to write and he introduced the Latin-speaking world to the decimal number system, and thus we too now use the  numbers 0 to 9 to make every other number we need.

I love patterns and have enjoyed teaching children to constantly be on the lookout for patterns both in maths and writing as well as in nature. My father was a maths teacher who also revelled in them and I have a daughter who uses them every day in her chosen career. My library has quite a collection of books that introduce students to the wonders of Fibonacci, so that they can then be inspired to count the petals on flowers, peas in pea pods, apply their new knowledge to the art of Leonardo da Vinci Here are just a few:

• Blockhead the Life of Fibonacci by Joseph D' Agnese and John O'Brien is a biography of Leonardo. It includes his childhood and how his peers treated him at school when he didn't think in the same was they did.

• Wild Fibonacci: Nature's Secret Code Revealed  by Joy N. Hulme and Carol Schwartz  looks at the places the Fibonacci sequence appears in nature.

• Growing Patterns  by Sarah C. Campbell does a similar thing but is perhaps simpler.

• Rabbits Rabbits Everywhere: A Fibonacci Tale  by Ann McCallum and Gideon Kendall embeds how quickly rabbits breed into a fun story and relates this to the Fibonacci sequence. You could read this alongside Emily Gravett's wonderful The Rabbit Problem.

• Fibonacci's Cows by Ray Galvin. This New Zealand title is a high interest easy read short novel, ideal for students who have an interest in maths.