Learning About Fractions With Cake!!

 

We have been introduced to the math concept about fractions while we also happen to be learning about fairness in May! Mrs. Herbert baked a rectangular shaped cake this week and iced it to share with the class. She started by sharing with the leader and 'cutting' one SMALL piece for them and the rest Mrs. Herbert got to eat. The students were pretty quick to realize that that was not fair for more than one reason (a: there are more students in the class than just the leader and b: the leader didn't get an equal piece compared to Mrs. Herbert's).

So we tried again (really we only scored the icing so we didn't make a mess of the cake!) We shared it equally and learned the name of one 'half'. When we divide something into two equal pieces, we call that one half.  

We decided that was too much cake for two people so we demonstrated about what the size would look like if 3 were sharing and 4, to include others. However, they were catching on that not everyone was getting one and we needed more parts. Well the pieces definitely got smaller when we added more and more people to get a part of the cake. It can also be tricky to got into equal pieces on our first try! 

And to be FAIR, we wanted to make sure everyone got a piece of our cake so we figured out how to cut the cake into 20 equal pieces and served it up as a special math treat today! 

This was a tasty introduction into parts of a whole, called fractions. We will be learning more as we explore and investigate the concept of fractions this week! Test out our knowledge of the fraction names!