Using Pizza and Pretend Play to Learn about Fractions

When my daughter was young she loved the PBS show “Peg + Cat,” and if you’ve got a fan of that show in your house this activity will be even better, but it doesn’t matter if your kids don’t already know these characters to learn about fractions with pizza.

There’s an episode of “Peg + Cat” where they are working in a pizza place and have to divide pies to put different kinds of toppings of different parts of the pie (there’s also an online game with the same concept, which I can’t believe still exists because my kiddo played it years ago).

Inspired by the episode and a companion book, Nature Homeschool developed an activity for learning about fractions and entrepreneurship using pizza. They developed a pizza shop and used the printables and teaching guide from Teacher Vision to learn more about fractions using pizza as the foundation. Their post also has a pizza order form printable you can use when you role play a pizza shop.

The Inspiration Edit also has some cute printable worksheets using a pizza to learn about fractions. And Life Over Cs has some fun printable pizza fraction activities, such as the printable fraction memory game shown here.

If you want to increase the pretend play factor with this one, you can make a pizza and toppings out of paper, cardboard or felt. Or use a paper plate as your crust and simple shapes cut out of paper to be toppings. The pretend play pizza making kit from Glued to My Crafts uses an individual slice, but you could do the same thing with a whole pie’s worth of slices.

Kids Craft Room has another fun pizza play food idea, this time using salt dough for the crust. The toppings are made out of felt so you can practice putting different toppings on a fraction of the pizza and learn as you play.

Next Plan Idea:

Loose Parts Play Ideas

France is a country in Europe that’s officially the French Republic, but it also has overseas regions and territories include French Guiana, the French West Indies and islands in the North Atlantic, Oceania and the Indian Ocean. Let’s learn more about France!

France Basics

France is the largest country in western Europe. Its 18 integral regions, five of which are overseas, combine to make an area of 244,288 square miles, or 632,702 square kilometers, with a population of more than 69 million. The mainland borders Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Monaco, Andorra and Spain.

Paris is the capital and largest city, as well as the cultural center of the country. About 2 million people live in Paris, which was originally inhabited by the Parisii people as early as the third century BC. The oldest evidence of humans in what’s now known as France is from about 1.8 million years ago.

Neanderthals once lived there, but were replaced by Homo sapiens around 35,000 BC. France is where some of the oldest cave paintings have been found. Because of its long history and rich culture, France is known as a leader in art, food, philosophy, fashion and more throughout history.

The official language is French, and about half of French people identify as Christian.

The government is a semi-presidential republic, with both a president and prime minister, as well as parliament.

The word France comes from Latin, in which the region was referred to as Francia, “realm of the Franks.” It’s unclear where the term Franks came from.

France National Symbols

The French flag features blue, white and red vertical bars. The design was adopted during the French Revolution and has been used ever since (that’s more than 230 years!).

The national anthem, known as La Marseillaise (or “The Song of Marseille”) was adopted in 1795.

The motto of France comes from around the same time, with liberté, égalité, fraternité (liberty, equality, fraternity) showing up in speeches and propaganda starting in the 1970s.

The fleur de lis, a heraldic symbol meant to symbolize a lily, is still considered a symbol of France, as it was used on the traditional coat of arms for the country and still represents it on the coats of arms of Spain, Canada and Quebec, and is featured in the coat of arms of Paris.

Marianne is considered the personification of France, and was chosen during the French Revolution as a symbol of liberty, equality, fraternity and reason. She typically wears a Phrygian cap, which was originally worn by emancipated slaves in Greece and Rome and is considered a symbol of freedom.

The rooster is also considered a symbol of France because the Gauls used to live in what’s now France, and in Latin the same word means rooster and Gaul.

France Activities for Kids

Learn to draw a fleur de lis with this video tutorial from Draw Stuff Real Easy.

Learn more about the Lascaux cave paintings and make your own cave painting inspired art. The Natural Homeschool has some images of cave paintings you can download, and Deceptively Educational has printable templates you can trace to make your own cave painting style art.

Take a virtual tour of the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe, classic landmarks of Paris. You can also look at online tours from the Louvre.

Learn the history of the Notre Dame Cathedral, or take a trip through history at the Palace of Versailles.

Because there’s so much history and culture in France there are a ton of landmarks and historical sites you can talk about depending on the interests of your kids. Grab a learning pack for kids from Proverbial Homemaker.

Learn to count to 10 in French (they have lots of other basic French videos, too) with help from Blabber Beasts.

Check out more resources for learning about France from Teachers Pay Teachers.

There’s lots of fun food from France, too, which you can sample or make for yourself, from baguettes and croissants to crepes, quiche and fondue. Some say pot-au-feu is the national dish, but I don’t think there’s an official one. It is the French version of pot roast, beef with vegetables. You can find a recipe at Serious Eats.

Next Plan Idea:

Have you read?

France Basics

France Activities for Kids

Leave a Reply