Number Rainbows

Thanks to Denise at Let’s Play Math for bringing to my attention the very cool idea of  Number Rainbows.

Now these things are cool for a number of reasons.   First, they’re beautiful.  My youngest is a huge lover of rainbows.  They were all he would draw for almost a year.;-)

Second, they’re really great for demonstrating and reinforcing the patterns that we see when we look at different ways to make a given number.

But what struck me almost immediately upon seeing them is how totally natural the Gauss method of adding up sequences is going to seem to kids who grow up looking at numbers this way!