Teach Fractions with Food!

Fraction Activities

Use these three food-themed activities in your classroom to teach your students how to understand fractions.


Use these three food-themed activities in your classroom to teach your students how to understand fractions. Read on to find out more!

Fractions can be a challenging concept for young learners to understand, so why not help your students visualize fractions by using fun food items? You can modify the following activities to meet your classroom needs, including whether you'll use real food or pictures.  

Fraction Pizzas

What better way to learn about fractions than to make them with pizza?!

Print out a picture of a pizza pie for each student in your class. Make sure the image you choose shows the pizza pie divided into equal wedges. When students receive their "pizza," they can use scissors to cut out the pizza wedges, rearranging them back into the shape of the original pie. Each time you call out a fraction, your students will take away or add pizza wedges to show the fraction you called. (Example: You call out the fraction 3/4 and students rearrange their pizza wedges to show 3/4 of a pie.)

You could easily follow up this activity with a pizza lunch!

Graham Cracker Games

Graham crackers are great fractional foods because they are easy to divide into segments!

Give each of your students the same amount of graham crackers and two paper plates or napkins each. Ask your students to break the graham crackers into segments and count all the pieces before the activity begins. All the graham cracker segments should be on one paper plate to start. You will call out a fraction, and the students will move that fraction of the graham crackers from one paper plate to the other. (Example: You call out the fraction 5/8 and students move five of their eight total graham cracker pieces onto the empty paper plate.) 

This is another way for kids to become familiar with the concept that fractions are parts of a whole. Of course, they make a tasty snack afterwards, too!

Skittle Skills

We think your students will especially love this sweet take on fraction fun!

Hand out a "fun size" package of Skittles to each of your students. Ask them to count the total number of Skittles pieces in their package. Next, help your students make a "Skittles Chart" on a piece of paper, labeling the sections of the chart for each color in their Skittles package. Students will place their Skittles pieces by color onto the chart. Once the Skittles are divided up, ask the students to write out the fraction of each color in the corresponding box of the chart. (Example: A student has 3 green Skittles and 13 total Skittles. He or she writes 3/13 in the green column of his or her chart.) Be sure to check their work as you walk around the room. 

Eating up the candy pieces at the end of the activity might be your students' favorite part, but they will have gained some fresh fraction insight first! 

We hope you and your students have fun exploring the world of fractions with these simple, food-themed activities! 

Be sure to check out the interactive fraction lessons available on iKnowIt.com to use along with these activities! 

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