Eating Fractions

Written and Photography by: Bruce McMillan

Recommended for: Children Ages 4-8

Themes: Math, Character Education

Summary:

     Eating Fractions illustrates the story of two friends who share their food by cutting it up into fractions to share amongst one another and with their dog. The children enjoy cutting up the food into halves, thirds and quarters. McMillian has used pictures of the friends dividing up there food along with simple drawings of each food with fractions displayed on each fraction of the food to show that the real portions of food are in fact a portion of the whole.

     Children will love the simplistic way in which the book is written and in which it displays dividing up a whole into equal parts to make a fraction. The pictures in this book really do tell the story, making it easy for children to go back to it on there own with little assistance from an adult while maintaining their ability to understand the story and concept.

Suggestions for the Classroom:

     Eating Fractions is a wonderful book to use with young children to introduce fractions as being parts of a whole. It is also a great book to open up discussions with children about sharing and how all members of a group should get equal amounts in order to be fair when sharing.

*Pre-Reading Activities: Tell the students brought in a special treat which you would like to share with them in class today: bananas. However, you were quite sleepy when you packed your bag today and did not bring enough for everyone. You only brought 12 bananas with you and there are 24 children in the class today. Tell students that you are very sad, because you wanted to share and are not sure how you can do it fairly so that everyone gets some. Tell that you are going to read them a book while you try to figure out what to do to solve your problem.

*During Reading: Point out to students how the two boys were able to cut up their the different parts of their meal so that each of them could have some. Ask the students if the boys were getting the same amount of each food?

*Post-Reading Activities: See if any of them come up with a solution to your problem and whether or not it could work for the amount of bananas that you have so that they can be shared equally. Carefully cut the bananas in half and count them with the children to see if you now have enough for everyone to get an equal share (you may want to have someone put paper towels down on the students desks ahead of time, if you can, to save time once you begin cutting). To extend this activity, after the students have finished eating their snack, give them a contruction paper template of a pizza. Ask the students to show you how they could share their pizza with three friends equally, between the four of them, so that each of them would get an equal amount.

About the Author/Photographer:

     Bruce McMillan was born in Boston, Mass but grew up and attended school in Maine. He began his love for literature as a young child, riding his bike into town each week to spend his hard earned allowance on books while he made his way through the Hardy Boys Series. McMillian always loved to take photographs, with a professional camera given to him by his dad at the age of 9, and sold his first one as a teenager (a photograph of his former home, now the summer residence of George H.W. Bush). He describes that while he has always loved reading and the spoken word, it wasn't until he was a "big kid". He states that he taught himself about writing while working as a island caretaker on McGee Island one summer. By the end of that summer he wrote his first published work, an article for the DownEast Magazine. During his last few weeks on the island, McMillian had also taken the photographs for and outlined his first book, Finestkind o'Day, which featured his own child.

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