Homeschool Discoveries

Miss M (3rd grade) is nearing the end of RightStart Math Level C.  While fractions were introduced earlier in the book, here near the end there are about 8 lessons (nearly in a row) covering various aspects of fractions.  Given that Mr. E (Kindergarten) is also very interested in Fractions, I decided to call a “Fraction Fun Day” this week and do lots of fun fraction-related activities with the kids:

After giving Miss M a light list of independent work to complete and having Mr. E practice reading, we dived right into our fun math topic for the day.

We had already been working on Fractions for a couple days before Fraction Fun Day (the picture shows Mr. E putting together the RightStart fraction chart on Monday), so our first activity was fraction art — the kids made kites from 1 inch graph paper I printed out, and we figured out what fraction of their kites were comprised by each color.   They also made “fraction ice cream Sundaes” and we decided what fraction of the ice cream was represented by each flavor (free template here).

After the art work I treated the kids to a fraction-related snack — Hershey chocolate bars! We worked through the Hershey Fractions Book together and the kids made the various fractions found in the book (and other fun designs).  After reading just a bit about the ingredients of a chocolate bar in the book, we just had to learn more about chocolate making! This video and this video from youtube were very informative! We also discussed ways we use fractions in everyday life: cooking, time money, etc (baby J thought the measuring cups were great fun to play with!).

RightStart’s card games set comes with a deck of fraction cards.  We used the cards to play a game called “One” (the object of the game was to make rows of fractions, and be the player to lay down the card that will cause the row to equal one).  We also played Fraction War.

Finally, a fraction fun day would not be complete without using fractions for some fun cooking! I suggested cookies, but between the fact I was missing ingredients for a recipe I really wanted to try, and the fact that Miss M had her heart set on using a recipe from one of her cookbooks, we decided to go with making candy critters instead.  This was fun activity that kept the kids busy for quite a while in the afternoon of our Fraction Fun Day!

Credit for inspiration for some of these activities goes to this post from Mary @ Homegrown Learners and some of the fraction-related posts @ Step Into 2nd Grade.