Math Madness Wednesday: Fractions!

As you probably already know, my son is autistic.  What you may not know is our family story (I promise, I will keep it short and get to the math!).  Both of my kids are adopted.  They moved in to our house as foster children and we became a Forever Family in November of 2006.  They are natural siblings, under a year apart in age (at this moment, I have two 11 year olds in my house!).  When they moved in with us, my daughter was 2 1/2 and my son was 3 1/2.  I will not go into all of the details about what led them to our home, but I will say that my son, Xander, was very delayed.  He was still wearing a diaper, didn’t know how to use a spoon or fork, and the words he did mumble were not understandable (except to his 2 year old sister, who was the best momma he had ever had!).  

The only thing we knew for sure was that boy LOVED cars!  I think he knew the difference between cars before he knew much of anything else!  So, what do you get when you add him to a teaching mom’s home?  Flash cards, hands on learning, and ALL things cars!  They happened to move in with us the week before Cars came out in theaters so it was very easy to find pretty much anything with a cars theme.  He loved that movie!  However, he also loved REAL cars.  In fact, he helped us make flash cards with symbols of cars (Ford, Honda, Toyota, Ferrari, etc.) and took them everywhere he went!  We bought tons of match box cars and Hot Wheels and we used those to practice colors, counting, sequence words, etc.  He was such a fast learner (and still is!).  He just needed some love, understanding, and for us to meet him at his interest level.  But, what child doesn’t need that, right!?

Okay, so on with the math!  The reason I brought up that story is because my son inspired my newest product!  He is still into cars, but now it is the fasted ones around (he can tell you who won the Indianapolis 500 for the last 20 years, plus how fast the winning lap was).  And, we were able to meet Bobby Unser, a racing legend (his whole family is in racing) this past summer.  Xander was more excited to see the car he won a race in than he was Bobby himself.  🙂  

So, I thought, why not use that to practice the vocabulary words associated with fractions!  Numerator comes before Denominator…..ND….Indy!  That was my thought process!  (In case you aren’t from Indiana or are not familiar with race cars, Indy cars are the long, skinnier cars, not the stock cars like NASCAR).  

I made this poster set as a reminder for your kiddos that Numerator comes before Denominator.  You can use them as anchor charts, posters, or inside interactive notebooks (the smaller versions are already included).

Once they have the vocabulary down, now it is time to practice.  These task cards, like all of my others, are differentiated to meet your kids where their needs are.  It starts as easy as showing a picture and kids identifying what fraction is shaded.  The middle level includes two fraction picture and asks the kids to compare the two fractions (same denominators).  The highest level has kids adding fractions (same denominators).  A recording sheet is also included.

Another way to practice is by playing Fraction WAR!  Students each turn over a card and the student with the largest (or smallest, your choice!) fraction wins both cards.  This is a FREEBIE on Educents right now.  

You can grab 3 of the items in this bundle  on Educents this week (the 4th item, the Fraction War Game, is FREE on Educents!).  

And, my Fall Pack is still on sale through Friday as well!

Make sure to check out all of the other fraction ideas below.  

I am so excited to announce that next week, Math Madness Wednesday will be joining with Mentor Monday, hosted by Emily from The Reading Tutor/OG!  Stay tuned for more information soon!