Visions Home School Student Wins “Math is Cool” Founders Award!

Home School 5th-grader, Clara R., beat hundreds of other students to win the 2018 Russian School of Math’s Founders Award! She blew the judges away with her video explaining the Fibonacci Sequence and its relation to music.

Clara has been with Visions since Kindergarten and she has taken full advantage of the balance and flexibility homeschooling provides by developing her interests and talents. Her mom and parent educator, Dana, chose home school to allow her children to be free and use their imaginations. Clara plays piano, dances ballet, sings, acts and enjoys reading, writing and exploring the outdoors. She also recently became interested in fashion design and has been drawing up designs in her free time. She has many aspirations and hopes to become a performer, professor or writer.

When Clara found out about the “Math is Cool” contest she jumped at the opportunity and worked over winter break to create the project outline, video and posters. She even edited the video herself, adding music, sound effects and transitions.

“I am so excited and thrilled,” Clara said when asked about her win. “I still think I must be dreaming!”

The Russian School of Math congratulated Clara on her excellent work by saying, “Your project is so smart and engaging! Math and music beautifully weaved together and presented with passion, understanding and humor.” Clara also received a 3D printer (pictured above) for her winning submission.

About Clara’s Award-Winning Submission  

Clara took the Fibonacci Sequence and applied it to one of her interests, music. This mathematical sequence is characterized by a pattern of numbers. Each number in the list is the sum of the two numbers before it. The sequence also uses ratios to create the “golden ratio” of 1.618 also known as PHI.

She’s an avid piano player so she numbered her keys using the Fibonacci Sequence to determine if you could create a melody only using the keys in the sequence. She also found that PHI can be found in music by studying the climax notes in the melody. If this has you asking yourself, “Am I smarter than a 5th grader?”, then we recommend you watch her video to learn more!