Fraction fish came from my son, who was shown it at school. I thought it was too good not to share with anyone who might be homeschooling. Such a simple and cute strategy for teaching fractions to kids.
All you need for this activity is;
- Paper
- Something circle shaped to draw around like a bottle lid
- Scissors
- Glue Sticks
- Pencils/markers
- Hole Punch (optional)
My son is in grade 4 now and has had lots of practise with cutting and folding. Smaller children may need a little bit of guidance, like my daughter.
Firstly draw around the lid or whatever you can find to make a circle. Then cut it out!
Folding Is An Art
Fold the circle in half
Then fold it again so you have something that resembles a pizza slice
Now when we open it we have a circle that has been folded into quarters. Next we cut one quarter section of the circle so that we have 3 remaining sections left.
Next we took another circle of a different colour and folded it one extra time to create eighths. We then cut out 4 sections of this circle so we had smaller ‘pizza shaped’ slices than the first circle.
Next we started creating our fish using the different pieces. The bigger pieces were used more for heads of the fish. The smaller pieces were used for fins. The fish can be as big, long, or as small as you like. It’s all about connecting them so you have alternate colours.
Then we got to work creating the faces and drawing patterns on them to make them look like fish. Because my 4 year old my daughter is still only learning with scissors, I helped with the cutting and she helped in ‘building’ the fish like puzzles.
We even used a hole punch to create some bubbles for the fish. But this is completely optional. It just gives the ocean scene a cute finishing touch. 🐠
Fun With Math
The idea of this craft was to teach the difference between halves, quarters, sixths and eighth and so on. The cutting part was a little tricky and time consuming but for older kids its a great learning tool.
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