Apple Fractions

By Leah | October 19, 2020

Celebrate the arrival of autumn with apple fractions! Your little ones will love learning about basic fractions with a fun snack-time activity featuring delicious apples in season. Read the iKnowIt October blog post to learn how you can teach fractions with fresh apples, a printable apple picture (provided!), or even apple pie.

Why Apple Fractions?

Food is an awesome visual aid for helping children understand math concepts, especially fractions. We love using apples because they can so easily be divided into equal parts, like many other fruits. When using real apples or even apple pie to teach fraction concepts to children, we always recommend an adult handles the knife used for slicing apples or pie pieces. Each of the following activities is a variation on the same concept, so you can choose the materials that work best for you and your students. 

Be sure to tag @iknowit so we can check out your apple fractions. Have fun! 

Teach Fractions with Fresh Apples

It's apple season, so let's enjoy nature's sweet treats while learning a little math along the way! For this activity, you will need fresh apples of any variety. You can choose however many apples you would like to use. You may want to have one apple for each student, especially if you plan on incorporating the activity into snack-time. 

Here are several ways you can teach fractions with fresh apples:

• Divide each apple into different fractional parts – whole, half, thirds, fourths, fifths, sixths, and so on. Each student will explore the different fractional parts that make up his or her apple and fit the pieces back together to see how they make up the whole. 
• Divide the apples into segments. Some of the apples should have equal parts while other apples should have unequal parts. Students must decide which apples are made up of equal parts and which ones are not. 
• Demonstrate different ways to make a whole from fractional pieces. Cut one apple into a half and two quarters, for example. Cut another apple into four quarters. Cut a third apple into thirds. Students will observe how each of the fractional parts combine to make a whole apple. 

Teach Fractions with a Printable Apple Activity

Print out this cute apple worksheet for your students to color as they learn about basic fractions. Instead of using fresh apples to explore fraction concepts, students can use a marker, crayon, or colored pencil to divide each apple on the worksheet into fractional parts to match the given fraction. This printable activity is a fun way to help students understand fractional parts without the potential mess of using real apples. Plus, since no knife is required to slice the apples, students can be more hands-on with this version of the activity. 

You may want to use the apple worksheet to accompany a demonstration using real apples—this way students can see how the fractions are formed with real apples and can practice making their own too!

Teach Fractions with Apple Pie

This could be the most delicious way to teach fractions with apples! If you would like to celebrate autumn and the end of your basic fractions unit with a special seasonal dessert, you can make apple pie with your little ones! A pie is an ideal shape for dividing into clear, easy-to-understand fractional parts. 

As you slice the pie pieces to serve, your students can help figure out how to divide the pie into equal parts for all to enjoy. 

We bet everyone will savor this autumn treat right down to the last fractional slice! 

Did you and your students give these apple fraction activities a try? What did you think? We want to hear from you! Drop us a line in the comment section below. 

Check out the interactive fraction activities on iKnowIt.com for more fun ways to practice basic fractions.