Fraction Feathers With the Fuzz

 

This week’s topic: MATH

Becca is totally in love with Gertrude McFuzz.  She has the app on her Kindle Fire HD Kids (find out more about it from my post here and here.) and listens to it/watches it FREQUENTLY.  So much so that she pretty much has the entire story memorized, and can take Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories (aff link) and almost read Gertrude line for line.  (And honestly, it’s a fabulous moral/life lesson to be engraining in her brain – if you haven’t read it, you really must!)

 

Another one of her recent fascinations has been fractions.  I recently said something like “let me cut that in half for you,” and she said, “what’s half?”  And then we had a conversation about something else that was divided into equal pieces… and then she asked about my measuring cups… and then she finally said, “You keep telling me things are fractions.  Can we do them?”  Hahaha.  Seriously.  This girl.  She LOVES math!  So, working from my background knowledge of introducing fractions, and combining that with the way I know her brain works, I came up with this super fun activity that she just absolutely LOVED!

 

(Get your FREE PRINTABLE HERE!)
Please note – the photos the front cover of my printable are just google search images.
The photo of Gertrude used for the feather pages was snapped by my camera from the book.
Can be printed in color or b/w.

So here’s how it works – print the sheets on card stock – so the glue won’t mess up your paper.  Then, get some feathers (Becca knew we were doing Gertrude when we bought the feathers, so she selected the blue/green/yellow pack because Gertrude’s feathers are those colors in the story – you could use any colors).  A great way to introduce the concept of fractions is to talk about what the top number and bottom number mean.  You don’t have to call them numerator and denominator, but you can if you want to.  For Becca, I started with the bottom number.  The bottom number is the total number of feathers we need to glue on.  Then, the top number tells us how many special feathers we need to pick of the same color.  

She didn’t want to mix the colors up, but you could obviously easily have 2/5 be one color, and the other three be other colors, etc.  We glued them on to Gertrude, and let the pages dry.  Then, we went back and talked about the fractions, and she told me what color feathers matched with the fraction.  I wrote the color word on the line for her.  Then, we made them into a book just by punching holes and tying ribbon through the holes.  You could easily laminate them and put them in a ring binder, but she loves to feel the feathers.  I know that it won’t last forever, but it was a super fun project, and every time we read her book, it’s fabulous fraction practice all over again!

Like this activity?  Please share it with others!  You can also share my Facebook page with others – I share activities like these regularly – not only from my own blog, but also from other bloggers.  And, each day at noon, I share a new must-have book to add to your personal library!  Coming up this next month, March is all about “real” books – you won’t want to miss these fabulous non-fiction finds for ALL ages of kids!