1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, ?, ?

I was doing patterns with one of my kindergarten classes the other day. Nothing too complicated... star circle square star circle square star circle square, and the like. They were getting them all very easily, so I decided to up it a little bit. 9 A 8 B 7 C 6 D, etc, and it took them a little bit longer, but they still picked it up pretty quickly.

So I decided to put something that was even more challenging. And that would be the pattern you see in the title. Some of you will probably crack it immediately; for others it may take a little longer. One of my students figured it out in her head within two minutes. She's six years old! Answer at the bottom.

That was interesting kindergarten incident #1 of the day. Number two occurred that afternoon. At the beginning of each kinder class, I draw a happy face and a sad face on the board; good behaviour and bad behaviour are recognized under the appropriate faces. I try to vary the faces each day - sometimes I'll draw cartoon people, other times anthropomorphized objects or animals. Yesterday I happened to do simple, almost geometric faces: dots for the eyes, accents circonflexes for the eyebrows, and so on. Upon seeing these, one of my students raised her hand and said, "teacher...emoticons?" Bear in mind, again, that these are six year-olds whose first language is not English, whose native alphabet is not Roman. The codebreaking left me impressed but not shocked; the emoticon incident (this, incidentally, would be a good name for an internet spy novel) left me flabbergasted and laughing. I asked her where she learned the word; apparently her mother and older sister were discussing it one day.

Thus, in honour of the occasion, I will end with a smile. :)

p.s. the next two numbers in the sequence are 21 and 34. Each number is the sum of the two preceding it: 1 + 2 = 3, 2 + 3 = 5, 3+ 5 = 8, and so on. Six years old! And she did it in her head!