Saturday, May 16, 2015

Fraction Fish

My team mates and I were looking for a fun way to introduce and practice creating fractions, when one colleague came across fraction fish on 3rd Grade Art with Mrs. Brown.  This looked exactly like what we had been looking for.  A creative way to use fraction circles to create sea creatures in an engaging and meaningful way.

Mrs. Brown has a powerpoint that she has created that you can download for FREE on her site.

She includes pictures that give some examples of what the sea creatures would like like. She also gives directions for how to make them. We are lucky because we have an Ellison Die Cut Machine still in our school.  I was able to cut out about 120 circles in about 20 minutes after school one day. If you have a parent volunteer and you have a the time to plan it out, I recommend you get some help.

Some advice....make sure that you do "follow the directions" that she has outlined for you.  If you have a group of kids who struggle with following directions, I recommend that you cut them together.  In other words, I would have them each choose a color and cut the circles in 1/2 at the same time.  Then do another circle, at the same time.

I also had the children label each fractional part after they cut them out and added details to the blue background.

Here is what my kids did: