More Fun With Fractions

For an after school snack yesterday, C and R had apple slices.  Before they could eat the apples though, we had another lesson on fractions.

We borrowed the book, Apple Fractions by Jerry Pallotta, from the library.  As much as we all enjoyed the chocolate fractions mentioned in yesterday's post, Apple Fractions is better suited for my first grader and preschooler.  The fractions are more basic and C and R had no trouble figuring out what part of the whole each picture showed. 

We also borrowed Whole-y Cow! Fractions Are Fun by Taryn Souders.  This book is my favorite of the three we have read.  If you are introducing fractions, start with this book.  The rhyming text and colorful illustrations are appealing to young students, and the silly cow helps too.  Prompted by a poem and a visual clue, readers are asked to answer what fraction is illustrated in the cows antics, starting with halves and progressing into thirds, fourths, eighths, and tenths.  There is a teacher's guide and links to other resources for teaching fractions available at the author's website too!  The teacher's guide includes a lot of fun activities using fractions; there is even a recipe for chocolate chip cookies (Is there a better way to use fractions than in baking?)!

Also, C and R had a great time playing Fraction Pizza Shop with our Learning Resources fraction pizzas and some paper fraction pizzas he made in school.  R was the waitress and I would tell her what fraction of a pizza I wanted.  She would tell C the order and he gave her the correct amount.  It was fun!

The Learning Resources pizzas have fractions on the back of them.  They are great learning tools and fun to play with too!

Chocolate Fractions

C has been learning fractions in school, so I couldn't resist borrowing The Hershey's Milk Chocolate Fractions Book by Jerry Pallotta from the library.

It's a little more advanced than the fractions he has learned so far, and it was all new to R, but they still had fun trying to figure out the math.  They each got their own Hershey bar out of the deal, so who could complain about the math?!

A Hershey's milk chocolate bar is divided into twelve pieces.  We spent some time talking about twelve-twelfths equaling one whole, six-twelfths equaling one half, etc.  We will definitely borrow this book again.

Their favorite part of the lesson, however, was when I told them what fraction of the candy bar they could eat.  I kept giving them fractions to eat until the candy bars were gone.

Thank you Ticia for the book recommendation!