How to teach fractions with pizza toppings
Perfect for first, second, or third-grade students this introductory fraction activity helps children visualize fractions by drawing pizza toppings.
Getting Started
Fast but effective, use this math activity to teach and reinforce the concept of fractions. No worksheets or printables required!
Start by asking your child to draw a pizza. You can use a plain piece of paper, brown paper/paper bag, a paper plate, or cut out a circle. Heck, you could even do this exercise with playdough. How elaborate you get is completely up to you!
Make Your Pizza
Select 4 or 5 toppings and ask your child to draw them on the pizza. We added pepperoni, green peppers, mushrooms, and chunks of sausage.
Once your pizza is full of toppings, ask your child to draw a legend. We illustrated our legend for each topping by vertically stacking each topping above the other.
For each topping, have your child count the quantity of that topping that he or she drew. Write the number of each topping as the top part of the fraction. This number is the numerator.
Now draw a horizontal line, the fractional line, and put the total quantity of toppings below the line. The bottom number is the denominator.
Explain to your child that the number of pepperonis is a fraction of the total number and quantity of toppings. Continue this process for each topping.
When you’re finished, make sure to add each of the numerators together to make sure their sum is the same number as the denominator. For instance, if your fraction’s bottom number is 28 then the total of all your toppings should also be 28.
During this exercise, our double-check showed us that we had miscounted the sausage. Instead of 8, there were 7 sausages on our pizza.
In our household, we really enjoyed this STEAM activity because it was a quick and effective visual exercise to reinforce the concept of fractions.
If you liked this activity, then we bet you’ll like our other Kids Activities.
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