Hands-On Activities for Fractional Parts of a Number

Hands-on Activities for Teaching Fractional Parts of a Number

Understanding fractions is usually fairly easy for kids to grasp. They can easily draw lines dividing a rectangle into halves or fourths. They can understand cutting a pizza into eighths.

Equivalent fractions and adding fractions with unlike denominators gets a little more difficult… and then there are fractional parts of a number. All of my kids initially struggled with this concept before really grasping the idea.

If you have 20 pieces of candy in front of you and you announce that you’re going to share them equally between two kids, they can do that math REALLY fast and tell you that they should each get 10 pieces of candy.

But how much is 2/3 of 48? No one knows.

Hands-on activities can give kids a concrete understanding of how a fraction of a group of items is determined, and then it will be much easier for them to transition to calculating the answer on paper.

LEGO Fractional Parts of a Number

Grab a bunch of LEGO minifigures and a baseplate if you have one.

Then choose a fractional problem to solve. Let’s figure out 1/4 of 28.

Since we’re trying to find 1/4, we want to arrange the LEGO minifigures in 4 lines. Then we’ll find out how many minifigures are in each fourth. It’s easy to see that the answer is 7!

It’s easy to figure out a fraction with a 1 as the numerator. But kids usually have a harder time figuring out 2/3 of a number, 3/4 of a number, etc.

In middle school math, they’ll learn how to multiply 3/4 x 28 (or 0.75 x 28) to find the answer. In third and fourth grades, that skill won’t be there yet.

Instead, they’ll need to figure out 1/4 of 28 and then use that information to calculate 3/4 of 28. It’s easy to see with a visual representation!

Gumdrop Fractional Parts of a Number

You can teach this concept in a similar way by using gumdrops or any other candy that is easy to arrange in rows.

We love using Post-it Notes for activities like this. It makes math feel less like work!

Non-Food Alternatives:

If you need to avoid using candy or other food items, some other great options would be buttons, pom pom balls, small stones, little erasers, poker chips, or math cubes.

Race to 50 Card Game

Practice fractional parts of a number with a competitive card game! Kids will love this one.

I printed the cards here from Relentlessly Fun Deceptively Educational. Head over to print your set!

(I noticed that three of the cards in my picture are a 1/2 fraction. The cards have a lot more options than that, in case you were wondering!)

Here’s how to play the game. You’ll need a counting item. We used mini erasers (we have a crazy big collection of them from the Target dollar spot!). You could also use mini pretzels, buttons, or any other manipulative.

Players take turns drawing a card. If they get a “take it” card, they take that many items. If they get a “put back” card, they have to remove that many items from their bowl. The first one to 50 wins!