Division Games

Use these division games to help your child:

Recognize that division is: putting things into groups (for example, dividing 40 by 4 is really just breaking apart 40 into 4 equal groups). Keep in mind this is different than sharing.

Division is often introduced as "sharing" and this is certainly one of the simplest approaches. At this stage children need lots of experience with sharing physical objects out and expressing what they are doing in words and then in symbols.

Parents are in a perfect position to reinforce sharing. Here are some things that are great for sharing. Your job is just to talk about how you go about sharing these things and what the division problem might look like that represents the sharing:

french fries
popsicles
cookies
licorce
apple slices
playing cards

Take advantage opportunities to show your child how to write the "actual" division equation.

Crazy Math Mom Tip

At our house, when we share some foods we use the food itself to write the division equation. For example, use french fries to write: 10/2.

Grouping is different from Sharing so it gets it's own section on this site.

The idea here is that you can take a large number and break it down into many groups.

Here are 20 cars. If 3 friends are playing together, how many would each friend get? What kind of groups would you make?

Here are some great ideas for division games:

1. TAKE A TRIP: If you are going on a trip, how many days will you be gone? How many meals will you have to eat out? How many outfits will you need? How many miles per day? (Use whatever is appropriate for your trip). If I am gone for 10 days then I will need to bring 10 outfits, we need 3 meals a day for 10 days, if we go 200 miles per day for 10 days.....

2. COOK: When your cooking there are many opportunites to experience grouping.
When we make toasted cheese sandwiches for 4 of us, we need to get out 2 slices of bread per person and 3 slices of American cheese per person.

When we make rice krispy treats we decide how many treats each person gets. (if we don't there are problems...that is no joke)

3. READ

I read part of a chapter book to my kids before bed. Together we decide when we want to finish the book. Next, we decide how many pages we need to read each night to be done in time. We look at how many pages total? How many days? Then, how many pages per day?

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