Time for a Pizza Party

Incorporate a pizza craft that will teach your students about fractions. Then enjoy a real pizza together.

The Pizza Craft

1. Separate your class in to groups of 3 or 4.
2. Hand each group a brown paper grocery bag and 3 magazines.
3. Tell each student to get out their scissors and glue from their desks.
4. Have the students cut out a big circle from the brown paper bag and tell them this is their pizza crust.
5. Next, have the students go through their magazines and cut out anything red to use for the pizza sauce.
6. Once the pizza sauce is glued on to the crust the students will need to search for white or yellow colors to cut out for the cheese..
7. Allow the glue to dry.
8. Use the scissors to cut the pizza in to 8 slices.

The Lesson

1. Have the children stay in their groups to use their pizza's as you draw on the board.
2. Ask the children how many pizza slices make up the whole pizza. They should say 8.
3. Draw the 8 on the board and place a line over top of it. Let the students know that the bottom number of a fraction always represents how many pieces are in a whole.
4. Have each student take a slice of the fake pizza and pretend that they ate them. They can just set the slices aside.
5. Ask the students how many slices are left. They should say 5.
6. Place the number 5 over top of the 8. Tell the students that the top number represents the part of the whole. In this case the part of the whole that was left over.
7. Show them they could also write the fraction 3/8 to represent the part of the pizza that was eaten.
8. Create some more examples with the pizza so that the kids get a good grasp of the concept.

The Party

Order some pizza for lunch to celebrate the kids understanding of fractions.