The topic of fractions often proves to be tricky for young children. Even some who love mathematics, find it difficult to grasp the concept to teach fractions for them. If you are a parent of a young child, you must be witnessing the hard time your kid is having with the overwhelming idea of fractions.
Fractions, as an abstract idea, may be a difficult one for your child to understand, but we witness fractions nearly every day, but what is the best way to teach fractions?. The one-fourth of a pizza you gave to your child and the chocolate bar you divided into two parts for siblings were your child’s encounters with fractions. It’s just that the young one didn’t need to pay keen attention to the concept of fractions until now and since most educational modules are created for mass broadcast, your child may find it boring and thereby unable to kindle any interest in them.
Luckily, there are plenty of ways to make your child have fun with fractions. Since we have to deal with fractions nearly every day, it becomes easy to have them enjoyably explore the concept.
One of the easiest ways of introducing your child to fractions is letting them think of it while they are enjoying their favorite food. The next time your child is feasting on a pizza, pie or a cake, spend some time with them dividing it into slices, and acknowledging the slices as fractions. For example, you can divide a pizza into four slices and tell them that a slice is 1/4th of a pizza.
If you cut a yummy cake into six pieces and your child eats two of them, they have eaten 2 sixths of a cake. You can explain and show them how the 2 sixths your child ate can be expressed as 2/6. There are numerous such examples you can find in your daily life while having food. Let your child toy with these ideas and remove the fears revolving around fractions.
As a parent, you must know how important it is for your child to have quality family time. To add a pinch of fun and learning at that time, here’s a game that your child can play. They have to prepare a questionnaire which has to be answered by the family members around them.
The questions could be observational and based on their appearance, e.g., the colour of the hair or the eyes, or the handedness (tendency to be left-handed or right-handed). It can also be purely based on preferences, e.g., how many people prefer tea over coffee, and ice cream over milkshakes etc.
Once they are done with the questionnaire, you can sit down with them to help them create fractions out of it. The number of family members who answered becomes the denominator. For example, if 3 members out of your family of 4 are right-handed, then ¾ people in your family are right-handed. Similarly, if two of them like tea, which means half the family likes tea, 2/4 members like tea. You can further explain how 2/4 is the same as 1/2. This fun game will allow them to not only see fractions, but also to create and engage with the concept.
Every child loves playing fun games and what could be better than instilling some learning while your child is playing. To help you with that, SKIDOS has a plethora of math games which will help your child grasp mathematical concepts easily and simplify learning for them.
Don’t worry, the games are short and engaging so that the screen time is optimally utilized. You can find SKIDOS games at https://skidos.com/subscription/. If you’re stringent about a no-screen policy, there are various activity books you can gift to your child.
Apply the ideas you found here and find your child having no difficulty in learning about fractions. Remember, there are three Ps you need to keep in mind when teaching anything to your child, patience, positive outlook, and positive reinforcement. Applying these Ps can help your child learn anything. For fractions, you just learned about a bunch of games. Have fun with teaching fractions for kids!
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