This free math video shows a great way to practice comparing fractions with unlike denominators using the least (or lowest) common multiple method. Cuisenaire Rods help make it visually obvious what we are talking about.
Be aware, though, that this is not an activity for those who have just recently been introduced to Cuisenaire Rods or fractions. This should be done after much play/work with both first so that children understand what the rods stand for.
This time around we started without paper and just used the Cuisenaire Rods. I tried to help my girls see more interesting ways of naming numbers to help develop more number sense and especially to work on fractions skills. This is a great activity to do to help you know where a child is at in their understanding and to help stretch their thinking to more mature ways of viewing numbers. You can work on all sorts of skills. It’s the type of activity that can be done many ways and at many levels!
The game idea in this free math tutoring video comes from LetsPlayMath.net. We just added Cuisenaire Rods to make it more tactile and visual. If you watch through the whole thing you will see my girls using the distributive property over and over to figure out multiplication facts. And at the end, you’ll see what kind of number awareness happens when kids have a chance to work with these rods a lot. They understand this stuff better than I do, I can promise you that!
