In first grade, the children have just finished up a unit on measurement. They explored measuring weight with balances, capacity with sand and cubes, and length with cubes, hands, feet, and inches. Currently we are starting a unit on fractions. The lesson began with the question: " Would you rather have a half of a candy bar or a whole of a candy bar?" Most children said a whole. A few said a half because candy is sweet and not good for their teeth or that they really didn’t care for chocolate. When I told them that they were really going to have the whole or the half of the candy bar, their eyes lighted up. Then I proceeded to pull out the candy bars I had. I had two different sized candy bars. I had the miniature candy bars and regular sized Hershey chocolate bars. The ones that said they wanted a whole got the whole miniature candy bar and the ones that said half got half of the larger Hershey’s bar. There certainly was a buzz about the room about this as they discovered that the half piece of the larger candy bar was much larger than the whole miniature candy bar. I emphasized the point of the lesson that a whole can be different sizes. So, size matters! In the end, they all had the same amount of chocolate so they were quite pleased.

We have also been folding paper into halves, thirds, and fourths. We have found that halves can be cut in different ways for some shapes. Identifying fraction notations has been introduced as we manipulate the paper fractions. We have pretended to make sandwiches as well with fraction bars and cut the bread into halves, thirds, and fourths.

I have read two wonderful books that supplement our study of fractions. One book is called Eating Fractions by Bruce McMillan and the other is titled When the Doorbell Rang by Pat Hutchins. You might want to ask your child how they can tell something is cut into halves (two pieces that are the same size).