We have reached calculations with fractions and have still not encountered any serious difficulties. The reason for this is that fractions have not been introduced as some strange new academic topic, but just as general vocabulary within your child’s experience. Your child is just learning more language. A few new words like half, quarter, fifth, etc. were introduced, but their close relationship to simple numbers has not been difficult.
Understanding the concept of fractions does not need …
- Complicated words like numerator and denominator.
- A new way of writing numbers sitting on other numbers.
In your child’s general language development, he/she knows many words that he/she cannot spell correctly. He/she might not even be able to write at all. In a similar way, your child might not yet know how to write these fractions in the “mathematical” way, but he/she will definitely have mastered the concept of adding fractions. Why? Because it is not a new concept at all. It is exactly the same as adding pencils or cats or dogs. Neither is 4 quarters minus 3 quarters a new concept. It is exactly the same concept as 4 dogs minus 3 dogs.
This website presents extracts of each chapter in the related book called Fractions For Parents. The chapters are listed on the side of this page.
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