Activities for Teaching Fractions with Legos

We’ve been doing all kinds of math with LEGO®, and most recently it’s been fractions!  Gresham (2nd grade) is new to fractions, and so we used LEGO® bricks to look at fractions from a variety of angles.

It’s really easy to build fractions with Legos.  We built 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, and 3/4 by making towers with LEGO® bricks.

I also created a simple fractions “worksheet” for Gresham by using a base plate and 2×2 LEGO® bricks.

He went across the rows and wrote down the fraction of blue bricks for each group of LEGO®s.

Then we looked at fractions from a different angle.  His math book (Making Math Meaningful – 2nd grade) has had several pages where he has to determine if a certain number can be broken into fourth, halves, etc.  This skill assists with understanding fractions as well as number sense in general.

I made him another “worksheet” with a number of LEGO® bricks to make into a tower.  Then, he had to figure out if it was possible to break that tower into fourths, thirds, halves etc.

The last thing we did was to explore different ways to show 1/2.  The size of a half can change depending on how big the whole is!  We talked about how 1/2 of $500 is a lot more than 1/2 of $10.

Be sure to check out the rest of the LEGO® Math Series:

• Preschool Roll and Count

• Two Math Activities Using Duplos

• How many Legos does it weigh?

• Grouping – Getting ready for multiplication

• Teaching multiplication – a 3D Lego approach!

• Multiplication with Legos – Candy store math problem (geometric model for multiplication

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