One morning when my husband left for work our son [then age 7]
came in to wake me up. He was laughing at something and I heard bits of
words like "cake", and "Garfield". As the fog cleared
my brain somewhat I realized he was talking about fractions! Yep - that did
it. I was awake.
My son was laughing at Garfield thinking, as he cut a cake, that he should share
with Jon. The joke is that he cut a slice and you think he will eat
that. Instead he eats all of the cake BUT the slice and leaves the slice
for Jon. That is a classic fraction question! If Garfield cuts a cake into
8 equal pieces and eats 7 of them how much cake is left for Jon?
That very day the Garfield Fraction Game was born. I had some Garfield stickers
I bought for 50 cents and my son wanted a blue file folder. Together we designed
the board with special stickers as rest spaces with funny comments. The left
side of the game is The Living Room and the right half of the game is The
Kitchen. The first sticker is his teddy bear. It says "Wake up and
Start Here".
To take your turn select a card. We made ours circles for the fun of it.
If you can answer the question you may roll the die and move that number of
spaces. We numbered our spaces. That was a gut feeling really and for now
it serves no purpose other than to know where you are en route to the finish
line. Later I'm sure I'll work it into the game.
As you answer each question you may take a piece of a fraction from our fraction
tiles. The trick is to build as many wholes as you can. Even my
preschooler knows you get farther faster when you are working with halves and
quarters! I like using the fraction tiles in this game. It helps to visualize
equivalencies. One whole may be made up of 1 half, 1 fourth, and 2
eighths. The real fun is in discovering the possible combinations for
yourself.
I love games that let the whole family play together. This game is about
fractions but is fun for even our 3 year old. She likes to earn fraction pieces
for her puzzles by correctly identifying the number on the die after she rolls.
Update:
My little one is now rolling one die and drawing that number on my back. Yep, it
tickles. Sometimes I have her count out that many pennies just to get her
working with money.
