Miquon introduces division with fractions, since most children who have to share cookies or who bake get the idea of half, quarters and thirds linguistically.
K had been drawing a bit of a blank on the early fraction lessons, but we hit on something today: I pulled out the scissors. Ah, K and crafts.
We’d been working down a row of 1/2 of largish number is fill in the blank, with somewhat glazed eyes. Today we switched to 1/2 X largish number = fill in the blank. K lit up.
“Mom, we used X but the answer is smaller, why is that?”
For some reason instead of Cuisenare rods, I’d grabbed a box of foam squares I’d cut years ago for a co-op math class. As I tried to explain why 1/2 of 8 was 4, I cut 4 foam squares in half, then counted 8 of them. K got excited, counted halves of other numbers, then cut a half in half and wanted to know what to call that.
We will need to review this, but once a light bulb goes off, it’s easier to re-light it. And I know where the scissors are.
Brilliant! Way to go! :)