Most of the people I know will run away every time they have to deal with fractions, but I think it is mainly because of the fractions that you are faced with in secondary school. Fractions should be fun and they shouldn't have to be scared to deal with fractions. My four year old is at that stage where he wants to divide everything in half, or divide his chips between his 5 dinosaurs so I thought it is just fitting to write a post on how to introduce fractions at this early stage and what fun activities can be done at home and even at kindergarten with them.

You can start off with using everyday items, like toys or maybe their favorite fruit. At this stage all vegetables and fruit are my sons favorite so we decided to use an apple.

In the above image you will see that they first introduced a whole apple, then they shared it into half, then quarters and then eights.

It is important to note that when the children are this little they will struggle to grasp the concept of quarters, eights etc. They will most likely grasp the concept when you talk about dividing it into two parts, four parts and eight parts.

Today we are going to use play dough to further introduce the concept of fractions.

Play dough has such a vast number of advantages apart from using it for mathematical purposes. It helps stimulate the child's fine motor skills, helps to close the nerve endings in their hands that causes touch sensitivity, there are a lot more and I will touch on them in another post later on.

I have planned out this introduction of fractions and here is the rest of the activities we are going to do.

1. We have a birthday coming up so for that day I am going to bake some cupcakes which we will then use to have some fun with fractions.
   
2. Pizza is just one of those type of foods that leans to mathematical activities, and fractions is definitely one of them.
   
3. Using shoes for fractions is a wonderful activity where they can use their own shoes. This is especially helpful if you want to introduce a whole pair or half of a pair.
   
4. He loves building legos so we will be using the different colors to assist us with the introduction of fractions.
   
5. Being at home most of us have some paperplates. Use four plates and paint each one a different color. Divide one into halves, one into quarters and one into eights. Let your child build the "paperplate puzzle". Afterwards you can make an art piece for them out of the "paperplate puzzles"
   
6. Clothes pegs is such a diverse product and once again I am using it for something else than hanging the clothes. Cut strips of paper, but be sure to cut the strips as big as the amount of clothes pegs you will use to cover the page. For example if introducing quarters cut the strip long enough so that four pegs will fit on the strip.
   
7. For our last activity I saw this wonderful idea of using poolnoodles. So we have a few old ones laying around at home and they will definitely be used for this activity.
   

Remember to ask these following questions everytime you do an activity with them:

1. How can we equally divide this apple (or whatever object or activity you are doing) into 2,4 or eight groups?
2. How many did each group receive?
3. Lets count how many pieces.
4. If it helps, put down their favorite toy to help them divide it into groups. I will definitely be using my sons dinosaurs.

Some videos you will like to watch:

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