Dancing Panda Fun For All Ages: Pizza Party Shares

Ni Hao Panda Pal! Today we’ll be doing a Math activity called, “Pizza Party Share.”

You and your family have decided to get pizza for dinner. There are four people in your family in total. How many slices do you need to cut up so that everyone gets a piece of pizza? Are these slices called quarters or halves? You and your family decide that everyone wants to have half a pizza instead. How many pizzas do you need if everyone wants half of a pizza?

Need some help doing this activity?

Tips:

Count the number of slices on your fingers to help you figure out the combinations.
If you have a pen and paper handy, you can draw pizzas and slices to help you figure out the answers.

Here’s how to figure out how many slices to cut up:

If there are four people in your family, you’ll need to cut up the pizza into four pieces, called quarters.

If there are four people in your family, and everyone wants a half a pizza, you will need two pizzas.

Want more fun?

Here is another activity:

If there are six people in your family, how many slices do you need to cut up? If everyone in your family wants a half a pizza, how many pizzas does your family need? If everyone in your family wants a quarterly of a pizza, how many pizzas does your family need now?

If you have extra time:

If you have access to a printer, scissors, and markers or crayons, print out this pizza worksheet. Color the pizzas, cut out the pizza slices into halves or quarters, and use them to help you figure out your answer.

Was the activity too hard?

Take objects from your house, like a piece of paper or pieces of food, that you can cut into parts to help your child make the connections and do the math.

Was the activity too easy?

Change up the activity from pizzas and have your child figure out how many pieces of apple each family member receives if there are eight apple slices.

Learning Connections

In “Pizza Party Share”, children are learning about fractions. A fraction is part of a whole number and is a way to split something up into smaller, equal parts. In first grade, the concept of fractions is introduced by children learning about quarters and halves, and largely taught by using simple shapes that have been divided into equal parts. Fractions are a foundational concept in math and are a building block for other math skills and concepts that children will learn later on, including division. Division can be introduced as a way for objects to be shared, or divided, into groups of an equal number.