How to teach fractions to your child

To help Little Mr. with the fractions questions that the Elephant Math program was starting to ask him, I found this to be the best way to help him:

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Teaching fractions to a toddler

DEVELOPMENTAL MILESTONE: Can count to 100, understands what a group of something is, understand the concept of selecting a subset of groups from the total number of groups

DURATION: 2-10 minutes

MATERIALS USED:

• Math blocks, Connect 4, or something with multiple small pieces to count

Question type: how to figure out a fraction of a number

For an example question like "What is 3/5 of 20?", I would go through the following process:

First, explain what the numbers of the fraction mean. I didn't use the terms "numerator" and "denominator" to make things less confusing for my 4-year-old:

• Top/first number: the number of groups you want.

• Bottom/second number: the total number of groups / how many groups there are.

• Another way to say the fraction is: first/top number "out of" bottom/second number (eg. 3/4 is also "three out of four", or "three groups out of 4 groups").

Then I would go over these 3 steps to help him solve the problem "What is 3/5 of 20?":

1. What's another way to say 3/5? If they're confused, you can remind them that it's the first number of groups "out of" the second number of groups. In this case, three out of five.

2. So how many groups do we need to make? Look at the bottom / second number of the fraction (5 in this example). All these groups need to be the same size, so split objects (blocks, coins, objects on screen, etc) one at a time into that many groups.

3. How many of those groups do you want? Look at the top / first number of the fraction 3 in this example). Count how many objects are in 3 groups to find the answer.

For smaller numbers (less than about 20-25), Little Mr. would choose to use his Connect 4 game to make his groups, or use the mouse to arrange the objects on the screen of the Elephant Learning program to make his groups. Otherwise, he used his math blocks which were arranged in 10's so he could more quickly get the right number of objects.