Teaching fractions with Lego

Our oldest started talking about fractions. Now these are very simple fractions and just to get you started, and to try and understand the concept.

I started looking around for something that could help me introduce the concept in a visual way – because I am a very visual learner myself. I wanted to illustrate fractions in a way that I would understand and that my son would understand.

Wraping your mind around fractions when they are just talking about it out of the blue is hard. To us, pizza night is a perfect way to talk about fractions as that is a natural to cut it into 2 1/2 – then 4 1/4 and finally its cut into 8 1/8…

But if you dont have pizza night right around the corner and your child wants to learn about fractions right now, what do you do.

I found that Legos are perfect for this – well lets be honest in my world legos are perfect for most things. They can be used for explaining fractions as well.

Here i have build the ilustration of 1 whole and two halfs

Here is the whole again but with 4 quarters

And finally into 8ths

Once you have whose you can start playing with the math of it. If you add 1/2 and two 1/4…

And what about 4 1/8 and a 1/2

This way is a perfect way to play and talk about fractions all afternoon, and no-one knows that they are learning math…