563. The Fibonacci Sequence - Christina Sinclair: Salty Sam's Fun Blog for Children

November 28th, 2025

Salty Sam’s Fun Blog for Children

Number 563

The Fibonacci Sequence

Hello Everyone

Do you have a favourite subject at school?

Perhaps you are good at maths?

Perhaps you are good at drawing?

Perhaps your reading has improved lately?

(lf you keep reading my blog posts, your reading must improve!)

Chances are that you are good at the subjects you like – and like the subjects you are good at.

When people leave school and go out to work, they all do different jobs to contribute to society.

Some people look after others people’s health, and some people look after other people’s education.

Some people work to supply power to our homes and businesses, and some people grow our food for us.

There are so many different jobs that people do, l don’t think that even l know them all.

This is a story about a man who was a mathematician; yes he did maths every day as his work!

He lived a very long time ago.

He was born in about 1170 and lived until about 1240.

His name was Leonardo Fibonacci – and he is sometimes known as Leonardo of Pisa.

Pisa is now a town in north ltaly, but in the days that Leonardo lived, it was a small republic; which is a territory without a monarch (king or queen).

Many consider him to be the most talented mathematician of the Middle Ages.

He was obviously a brainiac!

He was the son of a travelling merchant and customs official, and as a boy he travelled with his father when he went on business to Algeria in North Africa. There, Leonardo learned about the Hindu-Arabic system of numbers which is different from the Roman numerals: l, ll, lll, lV, V, Vl, Vll, Vlll, lX, X and so on.

Later, he wrote a book about what he had learned.

The book was published in 1202.

lt was called Liber Abaci (The Book of Calculation).

Whilst calculating the growth in the population of rabbits, Fibonacci worked out a sequence of numbers that created something very interesting. (The discovery brought to Europe calculations also done by mathematicians in lndia at a much earlier time.)

The number sequence is now known to us as the Fibonacci sequence.

ln this list of numbers, each number is the sum of the previous two numbers.

That means you add the last two numbers in the list to find the next number in the list – and so on to keep adding to the list.

So…

1 + 1 = 2 take 1 and 2 into the next calculation

Then

1 + 2 = 3 take 2 and 3 into the next calculation

Then

2 + 3 = 5 take 3 and 5 into the next calculation

Then

3 + 5 = 8 take 5 and 8 into the next calculation

Then

5 + 8 = 13 take 8 and 13 into the next calculation

lt is continued like this…

0, 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987

When the sequence is drawn in squares, it creates a spiral within a rectangle whose long side is 1.618 times the shorter side.

This spiral is very pleasing to look at, and you can notice it replicated over and over again in nature.

That means that God/nature/the Creator thought of it first.

So sometimes this phenomenon is called the divine proportion – or the golden ratio.

You can see the divine proportion again and again in nature as beautiful patterns.

lt is found in: plants – like broccoli, flowers – like the centres of sunflowers, fruits – like pineapples.

You can see it in shells and pinecones.

lt is also used in art and music.

Have a look in the Picture Gallery this week to see the patterns l am talking about…

Bye bye everyone – don’t forget to subscribe to my blog!

Love and kisses

Salty Sam

heart

www.christina-sinclair.com

Bill and Bob’s Joke of the Week

Bob: Do you know why plants hate maths?

Bill: lt’s because it gives them square roots.

Salty Sam © Christina Sinclair 2015

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of material from this blog without express and written permission from this blog’s author and owner is strictly prohibited.

Links may be used to www.christina-sinclair.com

wheel

Picture Gallery

Fibonacci

The Golden Ratio

wheel

desk THE SALTY SAM NEWS DESK

Bill and Bob’s mum is really busy in her shop – which is good.

She has to put extra hours in at this time of year along with the other ladies she owns the business with because there are so many customers to serve.

That means I have to do a lot of baby sitting – sorry I am not supposed to say that, I keep forgetting, I should say child sitting otherwise Bill and Bob get upset.

Anyway, their mum said that she was very grateful to them for helping out with the party she had in her shop a couple of weeks ago when she put out her Christmas stock and now she was going to get them to do another job.

It was a very important job.

She gave them some crisp, new, bank notes and told them to go to the Rocky Bay supermarket and stock up with some treats for Christmas.

She told them to buy some nuts and hard candies and anything else they took a fancy to that could be put out on the coffee table in the living room as snacks and nibbles. The Christmas pudding and the Christmas cake and the mince pies Auntie Alice would make, so they need not buy those.

So bright and early on Saturday morning they set off.

I, of course, went to help. And I held onto the money as well; we didn’t want that to get lost.

This is what Bill and Bob chose to buy.

Can you fill in the missing letters in this puzzle to find out what they bought?

A b _ g of m _ _ _ d n _ _ s
S _ _ _ _ d p _ _ _ _ _ s
S _ _ _ _ d c _ _ _ _ w n _ _ s
A b _ x of p _ _ _ _ _ _ s
A b _ g b _ g of h _ _ d c _ _ _ _ _ s
A t _ n of c _ _ _ _ _ _ _ e b _ _ _ _ _ _ s
An e _ _ _ _ _ _ s p _ _k of b _ _s of c _ _ _ _s
A d _ _m of c _ _ _ _ y b _ _ _ _ _ _ s
A b _ g t _ n of a _ _ _ _ _ _ d c _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ s
B _ _ _ s of p _ _ _ _ _ _ _ e j _ _ _ e
B _ _ _ _ _ s of l _ _ _ _ _ _ e
C _ _ _ y c _ _ _ s
A b _ x of c _ _ _ _ _ _ n c _ _ _ _ _ s
G _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ d
A b _ g b _ g of m _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ s for h _ t c _ _ _ _ _ _ _ e

We also bought some ingredients to make some cakes and went home to have a baking afternoon.

I don’t think our cakes will last until Christmas though.

Well, we had to do a taste test, didn’t we?

The rest of the goodies we bought will be hidden away in a cupboard for now.

Then we had a sit down and a hot chocolate each. After all that hard work, I think we deserved a rest and a treat!

*********************

wheel

Quick Quiz

Add together the answers to these questions. What total to you get?

How many days in a week?
How many leaves on a lucky clover?
How many petals are on a trillium flower?
How many gold rings in the Christmas song?
How many wings on a butterfly?
How many prongs on a table fork?
How many seed chambers in an apple?

wheel

lt’s the Weekend!

HOW TO MAKE PRESENT PACKETS

If you have a lot of little presents to give out and you have run out of wrapping paper, this is a quick idea to create present boxes.

Take a cardboard roll and squash it so that you have a crease each side.

Then push the ends in to seal them and make them three-dimensional. The creases here will be curved.

Before you do this, you could decorate the rolls first.

You could put a strip of decorative paper around the centre.

But after you have filled them, you could tie them up with a piece of string, or yarn or ribbon.

Or you could use a tube from crisps and cover that with paper.

Or you could put lots of little presents into a jar and put a ribbon around the top. This makes the little presents look more interesting and ‘dressed up’.