We’re doing Jumbo Lego fractions today, and they are so fun!! Kids love Legos, and they are such a fantastic teaching tool. We used them for reading and letter recognition, but today we’re using them for fractions.
Why Legos? First of all, you probably have some of these lying around your house or classroom. They seem to be one of the first playthings we buy our kids, and with good reason. Blocks of any kind help children learn fine motor skills, math skills, creativity and even teamwork. (Penn State Extension)
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Legos in particular seem to be good for patterning, problem solving, and overall creativity. Jumbo Legos are a great place to start because they are not a chocking hazard and are easier to handle with tiny hands.
Lego Fractions
Legos make fantastic math manipulatives. There are so many counting, patterning, adding, comparing, and other math activities you can do with Legos. We wanted to find a way to teach early fractions for lower elementary grades.
The jumbo Legos were perfect for this. We used several different faction combinations, but you can use whatever works for your class.
Our first Lego fraction combination was 1 whole, 2 haves, and 4 quarters. I wrote the fraction on each Lego segment ahead of time. Then the children had to stack them together. Two halves fit perfectly on our whole, and the 4 quarters made up the exact same length. So fun!
Then, we moved on to something a bit trickier. We had 2 halves, 3 thirds and 6 sixths that all connected to make the same Lego length.
The other one we tried was 2 halves, 4 quarters, and 8 eighths. That one was a lot of fun because half of it was the same as our original fraction set. If you keep building more of those, you could do sixteens and so on.
I love how visual this activity is. You can easily see how the pieces of a whole work together and compare them. I liked using one color per fraction section, because it made it easier to see the comparison between how many of that fraction to make a whole.
If you haven’t tried Legos to do math yet, we suggest you try it out. Lego fractions are a great place to start, but don’t stop there. What other fun learning ideas can you come up with?
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6 Responses
This is awesome! My son found equivalent fractions to be challenging in third grade this past year, so this will be a good activity to do with him this summer.
I’ve had children struggle with that as well. I love how visual this is. It makes it so much easier to understand when you can see it.
Can I buy just those 14 pieces anywhere??
The legos? We actually don’t sell the legos.
Email us amy@Planningplaytime.com
what age is appropriate for teaching these fractional concepts?
Typically Prek/Kinder age, around 4 – 6 years of age.
Email us amy@Planningplaytime.com if we an help with anything else.