Tag: birthday

  • Fibonacci Birthday Party!

    Fibonacci Birthday Party!

    I’ve been preparing for months to have K8’s Fibonacci Birthday party. Last Saturday it happened.

    We did a lot of preparation.

    Here is Judson creating the Fibonacci squares and spiral on our tile floor:

    Here is the birthday “cake” I made. It’s a Fibonacci Squares brownie cake!

    I ordered these math picture books from Kaplan for the party favors. I put a sweet “thank you for coming to my party” sticker on the inside from K8:

    The set up was intricate.

    The spread included descriptions of how each thing was related to Fibonacci.

    Someone said, “I’ve never been to a grownup’s three year old birthday party before.” Indeed, there were lots of informational pieces.

    We even had the Furry Fibonacci Bunnies out!

    And there were activities too!

    My mom carved potato stamps with all the digits and I had apples cut open so the kids could stamp with them. There were also sea shells to glue on!

    We had glue and squares out for kids (and parents) to make their own Fibonacci Squares and Fibonacci Spiral.

    Even the grownups had a “craft” to do!

    Grownups AND kids had a great time!

    I refrained from pointing out the pseudo Cartesian Coordinate plane created by my new grass.

    Here’s Wil explaining the Fibonacci Squares to my three moms.

    Math presents!

    How fun that K8 got some really neat math presents — like this animal pattern blocks from Melissa & Doug.

    And we were both excited about the UmiZoomi Preschool Math Kit!

    Even the “Thank You” notes use math!

    I pulled out the stamps we ordered for K8’s announcements three years ago. Of course postage has gone up since then so we needed to add one!

    Do the activities with your kids!

    Here are some free downloadable printouts. Use them to play and learn more about Fibonacci.

    Share your thoughts in the comments or on twitter/x.

    Non-disclaimer: We paid for everything at this party. Kaplan gave me a nice discount for the books, though. Thanks, y’all!
    Bad-girl confession: Many of the images on the document stands were stolen from various online sources. Since I was using them for personal use, I neglected to give anyone credit. The downloadable documents shared above have legal images, though.

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  • Fibonacci Birthday Party Preparation — Fun Facts

    Fibonacci Birthday Party Preparation — Fun Facts

    I’m planning K8’s Fibonacci Birthday Party. And I have some decisions to make.

    • Evite or mailed invitations?
    • Design my own invitation or use a template?
    • Give information about Fibonacci Numbers on the invitation or just let guests figure it out?

    In trying to make these decisions, I’ve found a number of resources full of Fibonacci finds and glorious Golden Rectangle goodies. I thought I’d share:

    And here’s what I just created myself:

    Oh — and I also learned how we get the golden ratio. It’s the number that the ratio of consecutive numbers in the Fibonacci sequence approaches. We call it phi and it’s sort of 1.62.

    Cool!

    Share your thoughts in the comments or on twitter/x.

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  • Birthday Party Fibonacci Style!

    Birthday Party Fibonacci Style!

    This year K8 is turning 3, a Fibonacci number. So we’re having a Fibonacci Birthday Party!

    Her birthday parties the previous two years have been non-math. And I’m fairly certain at some point she’ll want to choose her own birthday party theme. So this might be my last chance to do a Fibonacci birthday party.

    Fibonacci Birthday Party Decorations

    Spiral streamers, pinecones, whole pineapples and sunflowers will adorn the house.

    We’ll have blue painter’s tape outlining the spiral on the tiles of the floor. And we’ll each wear a fun Fibonacci t-shirt!

    Birthday Party Foods

    We’ll have bananas, apples and pineapples as healthy snacks for the kids. And I’ll likely do an arrangement of Cheez-its glued down with peanut butter. Of course there’ll be plenty of free floating Cheez-its too!

    For the grownups, we’ll have broccoli and cauliflower along with cucumbers.

    If we serve a meal, we’ll do lasagna with Fibonacci rectangles outlined in spinach fettuccine noodles!

    Party Favors

    I’ll buy a bunch of Fibonacci paperback children’s books, including Rabbits Rabbits Everywhere and Wild Fibonacci. I’ll print some fun stickers to put on them that read

    And those will be the party favors!

    Fibonacci Birthday Party Gimmicks

    We’ll play some games, including Fibonacci Hopscotch (as suggested by @mathhombre). The adults can play, “What is My Fibonacci Number?” based on the popular party game, Who Am I?

    And the best part – we’ll have live rabbits for the kids to pet!

    What do you think?

    Have you ever given a Fibonacci Birthday Party? or a math party? Do you have any other ideas to make this awesome?

    Please share via twitter or in the comments!

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  • Birthday Math: How to Celebrate with Math

    Birthday Math: How to Celebrate with Math

    Do you try to integrate math in everything? Would you like to? How about integrating it into birthdays?

    It’s Husband’s birthday today. He’s 42. But instead of just saying, “Husband’s 42,” I can say he’s 13.37pi years old. (At that site you can also find an “exact” pi birthdays in case you want to celebrate at some other time.)

    He’s also 15,340 days old! This site calculates months, hours and seconds too.

    He’s 2×3×72 \times 3 \times 7 years old. His age is also the second sphenic number. What’s that? I’m not sure – but if you click on your child’s age on this Wikipedia page, you’ll get some fun sounding words for their number that they can use all day! Here are some for your kids:

    He can go here to find out that he was born in MCMLXIX. This nifty birthday math trick will result in the number 4.22 (April 22 – his birthday!). Or this one which will result in 42269 (also his birthday).

    For some fun birthday math, he (and you) can check out The Birthday Problem – also known as the birthday paradox.

    How will you celebrate a family member’s next birthday? Will you use birthday math? Share your thoughts in the comments.