The one thing I love about trying this out with my little is that mistakes help us either laugh or learn (or both). Here is a laughable moment that I would totally do differently next time.

Materials: The Fraction Kit (See Fractions Day 1 and Day 8 for how to make the Fraction Kit), one kit per person, sharpie, and ideally a blank wooden cube. (See Fractions Day 2 alternatives for a cube.) We also used a whiteboard and dry erase pen, but those are totally optional.

How To Play:

1. Using the sharpie, label the 6 faces (one fraction on each face) of the cube as follows: 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/6, 1/8 and 1/16. Reflecting back, I would have swapped the 1/16 out for 1/12. May have to try this next week…
2. Place the 1 whole fraction strip in front of each player. This is your “game board”.
3. Player 1 rolls the die, and puts that fraction piece on his/her 1 whole to the far left.
4. Player 2 rolls the die, and puts that fraction piece on his/her 1 whole to the far left. Who has covered up more of their 1 whole? (In our game, Chris had.) How do you know? (Chris originally said, “Because purple is bigger than pink.” I restated, “Oh, so you mean 1/4 is bigger than 1/16?” This helps them start visualizing the size of pieces and prepare for comparing.)
5. Player 1 rolls the die again and puts that fraction piece right next to the first one so they are touching, but there are no gaps or overlaps (as best as they can). Player 2 does the same on his/her board. Who has covered up more? Who has covered up less? If the two rolls were the same (e.g. I rolled two of the 1/16) How many sixteenths do I have? (2/16).
6. Play continues until a player covers exactly 1 whole. If a player rolls a fraction that is too big to fit, he/she loses that turn.  Some questions to ask (as appropriate):
   1. Who has more? How much more? (They can use their pieces to figure it out. No actual arithmetic!!!)
   2. Who has less? How much less?
   3. Do you need more or less than 1/2 to win the game? How do you know?
   4. How much more do you need to win (get to 1 whole)?
7. Once a player has won, have him/her write the number sentence for his/her board.
8. Repeat the game 2 more times. Best out of 3 is the winner.

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So the first two games went fine. Then the third game I was left with this:

Needless to say I lost, since I did not have the opportunity to roll 1/24! Chris thought this was great, since he then won 2 out of the 3 games. Next time, I am going to allow the player to remove a piece of his/her choice in exchange for a roll. THEN they may roll the turn after to continue playing the game. This sets us up for the Uncover It! game coming up in a few lessons…

Hope these lessons are going well for you! We love our fraction time and look forward to it daily!