14th March International Day of Mathematics, 26th March World Maths Day

Every day should be Maths Day, but there are so many specific days on the calendar. There is E-Day to celebrate Euler's Number (7.2.25); Pi Day (14.3.25); Square Root Day (5.5.25); Women in Mathematics Day (12.5.25); International Sudoku Day(9.9.25) and Fibonacci Day (23.11.25).

The International Day of Mathematics (IDM) is a worldwide celebration. Each year on March 14 all countries are invited to participate through activities for both students and the general public in schools, museums, libraries and other spaces. The theme for this year is Mathematics Art and Creativity. What fun!

If you look at the website, you will see lots of things to get you involved with the theme. This year’s creative challenge is constructing mathematical elements using everyday physical objects (such as household items, objects from nature, or even people). Use your artistry and creativity (this year’s theme!) to make sculptures that bring mathematics off the page and into the real world!

Often the preschool teachers will ask for books that show numbers and or patterns in nature or the environment. They will use a picture from one of these books as a provocation. These are some of the books I suggest.

• Growing Patterns and Mysterious Patterns  by Sarah Campbell

• Swirl by Swirl  by Joyce Sidman

• Flow Spin Grow  by Patchen Barss

• Pitter Pattern  by Joyce Hesselberth

• Wings, Waves and Webs  by Robin Mitchell Cranfield

• Magic Counting  by Nabeel Khan

• Shape Search  by Melissa Stewart

• Deadly Science: Numbers in Nature  by Corey Tutt

• Dreaming Up  by Christy Hale 

• Patterns in Australia  by Bronwyn Bancroft 

• Lots and Lots of Zebra Stripes  by Stephen Swinburne

• Patterns at the Museum  by Tracey Steffora

• The Art Garden  by Penny Harrison

• The Art of Clean Up  by Ursus Wehrli

• Searching for Treasure  by Johanna Bell

and look out for All About Patterns  by Elizabeth Rusch which is coming in April.

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.