Today, we are exploring fractions. My children love LEGO. They are always either working on building LEGO or enjoy playing with it, so we have it out most of the time. Fractions are an abstract mathematical concept, and even Julia at seven-and-a-half is still not grasping it entirely. Making abstract representations concrete is a cornerstone of Montessori education, and using toys as concrete hands-on illustrations always worked best since children can relate more to their toys rather than to an unfamiliar material, even if concrete in nature.
We started with really large pieces (from this set) in three primary colors: red, yellow, and blue, and I illustrated to Adrian how the whole can be made up of pieces/fractions. I am using a dry erase double-sided board (buy here), and these washable dry-erase markers.
1/2 has a special name – "a half" and 1/4 has a nick-name too – "a quarter."
Capturing Adrian shooting a ๐ฃcanon in motion!
Taking fractions a step further …
Adrian is fascinated with firefighters and firetrucks. So we incorporated a burning "2/3" fraction and a firemen to the rescue!
These fractions I made for Julia (7.5 yrs) using LEGO Friends set. I was hoping to illustrate that fractions can be written using different numerators and denominators, while still representing the same numerical value.
For more on Fractions, see our original post "Fractions – Montessori Math" post here.
For more on LEGO, see here "LEGO Juniors Demolition Site Building Kit" post. Also see here a post "Julia's 7th Birthday Gifts: LEGO Friends" and here "Julia's Christmas Gift: LEGO Creator Expert Santa's Workshop" post.
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