Early Math Project

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Giraffes Can't Dance

Full House

by Dale Ann Dodds

Will Miss Bloom fill the The Strawberry Inn?

Math Connections: 

Fractions                 Parts of a whole

Activities to Do Together: 

• Use Full House: An Invitation to Fractions to gently introduce children to the concept of fractions as parts of a set and parts of a whole. 

• Each new guest of the Inn fills another room which adds another one-sixth (1/6). As each guest arrives notice that another light goes on in the windows of the Inn. This is shown in the small box in the lower right of the page. 

• Miss Bloom and her guests share a strawberry cake that has been cut into six equal pieces. Each piece is one-sixth (1/6) of the whole cake. Ask your child how many pieces make up the whole cake. 

• Talk about other real-life situations in which you use fractions. Sharing food or toys would be great examples. 

Extension Questions: 

1. How did the guests at the inn make sure the cake was shared fairly with everyone? 

2. When a pie is cut into four pieces, what fraction of the whole pie is each piece?

3. If Mom or Dad says, “give your brother half of your sandwich.”, what is the fraction in that statement? What does “half” mean? What does “half” look like, written as a fraction?

4. When has there been a time that you have used a fraction? Tell me the story.

Vocabulary for Building Math Concepts

1 whole, 1/6, 2/6, 3/6, 4/6, 5/6, 6/6, 210 miles per hour