When I was teaching elementary school, we did a math lesson about dividing cookies. I loved it and really wanted to figure out a way to make it work for preschool. After a couple of tries, I am happy to say we have achieved awesomeness!
It all starts with this book:
In the book, the kids start with 12 cookies and two kids to share them. Then the doorbell rings and they have to share with more. Then it happens again, and again.
So we read the book and talked about what it means to share things equally or divide them. Then we went over to the preschool table and each child got 12 cookie cereal pieces and 6 people.
I asked the kids to take out one person and tell me how many cookies they would get by putting all the cookies on the person. We wrote down on our paper that we would get 12 cookies.
We took them off, then took out 2 people and shared the cookies between the two people.
It might take some practice to help the kids pass out the cookies one at a time to all the people. We took them off and then we did it sharing with 3 people.
Next it was 4 people.
We took them off, then took out 2 people and shared the cookies between the two people.
It might take some practice to help the kids pass out the cookies one at a time to all the people. We took them off and then we did it sharing with 3 people.
Next it was 4 people.
Last it was 6 people.
As we were going, the kids wrote down how many cookies each person would get in each group. I used the worksheet below for the older class. For the younger class, the numbers were already on the paper in a tracing font for the kids to trace.
Of course we ended with the kids eating all the cookies! It was a lot of fun and really rewarding to have finally figured out how to make this lesson work.
To download our cookie sharing sheet for older kids click here.
To download our cookie sharing sheet for younger kids click here.
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