F is for Fraction Fun

I have discussed how I love to teach math in the kitchen. Fractions are one of the topics that are great to learn as they are a hard concept to understand, but in the kitchen you can get a lot of hands on learning. Whether it is cutting a sandwich into half or quarters, or having the children compare measurements when following recipes, fractions become real to the children. 

A while back I saw this really cool book called The Hershey's Milk Chocolate Bar Fractions Book.

I had taken it out of the library and we used part of the book a while back. Since then if we have a Hershey bar in the house, the girls will get it out of the drawer after lunch and ask to do fractions. 

I do not remember exactly how the book taught the fractions, but this is one way we learn about fractions.

First we write down that we have 1 bar.

This time I broke it into quarters to start with (I've been known to start with halves).

I explain to the girls that each piece is one out of the whole and there are four pieces. So they put 1 (piece) over 4 (total) underneath each piece.

Then we slide two of the quarters together on the right and the other two together on the left. 

I explain to the girls that we have 2 (pieces) out of 4 (total). Then we look and see that it is 1/2 of the whole bar. 

Then we slide all the pieces together and see that we have 4 (pieces) out of 4 (total). We add: 1/4 plus 1/4 plus 1/4 plus 1/4 which equals 4/4 or 1 whole bar.

 One whole bar that they really really want to eat. So...

they each get 1/4 of the bar. And mommy and daddy have to share the last quarter. Unless the girls are nice enough to share their quarter, which they usually are.

Of course now, Harold also wants some.

Here is our finished fraction paper.

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