THE FABULOUS FIBONACCI NUMBERS

Whether impassioned by mathematics or struggling to find meaning and perform competently in math, both educator and learner who embark on the study of the life of Leonardo of Pisa, known as Fibonacci, will find a wealth of inspiration, awe, beauty, and discovery.
I recommend Blockhead: The Life of Fibonnaci as an excellent example for accessing mathematics through a history approach. This biographical story of Fibonacci, although loosely based on a few known facts of his life, stands on its own as a story with international intrigue, the struggle against the imposition of other people’s limitations upon a person, and a discovery so wondrous that few can be left unchanged after reading this tale. No one can quite look at the universe in the same way again. This picture book is almost guaranteed to act as a springboard to a multitude of interesting mathematical explorations in the way of activities, problems, pattern finding, and nature observation.
A young boy from Pisa, Italy, is known as “Blockhead” throughout his town due to his lack of concentration on practical studies. But his love of numbers persists. He travels with his merchant father to other countries and there encounters a new way of writing numbers. Eventually, he poses a problem, called the rabbit problem, which leads to the discovery of a mysterious sequence of numbers that shows up in many places in nature: pinecones, flowers, pineapples, shells, and spirals, to name a few.
This book fits beautifully into a history-based approach to math. Both parent and child will be eager to follow this story with any of the following books that illustrate or expand the concepts and provide for engaging activities. For this reason, this book and the following are highly recommended. Grades 1-5.

Blockhead: The Life of FibonacciGrowing PatternsRabbits Rabbits Everywhere: A Fibonacci TaleFascinating Fibonaccis (Dale Seymour Publications)Fibonacci Fun: Fascinating Activities with Intriguing Numbers

One Grain Of Rice: A Mathematical Folktale

This wonderful book illustrates both visually and in story the doubling of a number from 1 to one billion.  In the story, a village girl in India outwits a raga who is hoarding the people's rice supply.  She cleverly catches rice that is being spilled from one of the raga's rice baskets in order to turn it in to him for a reward.  She at first modestly replies that he can reward her one grain of rice. When the raja insists on a more substantial reward, she instructs him to give her just one grain of rice that day; but each following day, for thirty days, he is to double the amount of rice he gave her the day before.  The story then illustrates the delivery of rice to the village girl day by day.  The book presents an engaging story, with equally engaging visuals.  The amount of rice presented over the 30 days is illustrated.  On the thirtieth day, the 2 pages of the book open up in additional folds to display together four pages of 256 elephants carrying baskets of rice containing 536,870,912 grains of rice.  This book not only illustrates number and the concept of doubling, it inspires the desire to be knowledgeable about and clever in math. The story, without the mathematical teaching point, stands on its own. Highly recommended.  Ages: K-upper elementary.