As a part of Michigan's restructured elementary certification, we got the opportunity to restructure our two math ed courses for elementary into an introduction with geometry and measurement (Statistics has a companion course on data and statistics.), Number and Operations, Fractions and Decimals, and Early Childhood Mathematics. Most students will take all four, depending on grade band certification, and those with a math emphasis have 3 more. (I'm teaching the statistics one next semester for the first time in Winter 2026.) I taught the fractions course for the first time this fall, and thought I'd share the fraction games we used. It's a community-based learning course, so we met at an elementary school and taught kids twice a week, one 4th and one 5th grade lesson. So these are kid tested! Mostly they are shared elsewhere or modifications of games I hope you know already. Games without a creator name are mine or my variation on another game, though most of these are pretty simple so I'm sure they're out there from others!
The course begins thinking about fair share problems in context. 3 brownies to share between 2 friends. How much does each get? And trickier and trickier from there. The pictures learners make from these problems are our first models.
Then we start exploring a more formal linear model of fraction bars for 1/2, 1/4, 1/8 and 1/16. Sometimes I'll have them make their own from construction paper, sometimes cut and decorate from a print out. On card stock if that's a possibility. With these two classic Marilyn Burns games, there's so much to notice. Composition and decomposition, equivalence and more. But they start where I want to start. Fractions are quantities in relation to a whole. Fraction numbers are inherently confusing. A 1 and a 4 and it means something different... division is involved somehow?
Fraction Cover Up
By Marilyn Burns
Fraction Kit for each player/team.
Die with ½, ¼, ⅛, ⅛, 1/16, 1/16 or a spinner set to the same.
Put the whole down. The goal is to cover up the whole EXACTLY with the pieces you roll.
On your turn: roll or spin. Add that size piece to the whole. If the piece is too large to fit in the space remaining, pass the turn.
First team to cover exactly wins.
Example: You have ½, ⅛, ¼… and you roll ¼. Too big, pass the turn.
Fraction Uncover
By Marilyn Burns
Fraction Kit for each player/team.
Die with ½, ¼, ⅛, ⅛, 1/16, 1/16 or a spinner set to the same.
Cover the whole with two 1/2s. The goal is to uncover the entire whole exactly.
On your turn roll the die. If you have that size piece, remove it. If you don’t have that size, you have an option. You can break up a piece into any pieces which equal it. You can also choose to keep the pieces you’ve got.
Example: You have two 1/2s, and roll a ¼. Bummer! You choose to replace a ½ with ¼, ⅛, and two 1/16.
Example: You’re down to just a ¼ and 1/16. You roll a ⅛. Bummer! Do you break up the ¼ or keep it?
Extras:
Eighths vs Sixteenths
One team gets the eighths and the other the sixteenths from the fraction kit. The eighths team has a spinner with 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, and the sixteenths has a regular 1-6 die. On their turn, they spin or roll and get that many pieces. Trying to make exactly one. If you need 2/8 and spin ⅜, you pass your turn.
On the replay, switch sides.
Be sure to ask teams how much they have and how much they need. This works on iteration, adding with like denominators, and sums to 1.
Another early fraction game I love that can be repeated later is I Spy a Fraction.
I Spy a Fraction
Stand in a circle so you can see one another.
One person in the group says I see something true about ____ of us, filling in the blank with a fraction. Others, starting to the right of the spy, try to guess what characteristic you’re describing. Once someone has guessed (or there are no more guesses) invite another person to spy a fraction. (I often start with glasses.) To choose a next spy, you can go around the circle in order, or have the person who guesses correctly be the next spy. Play several rounds.
Depending on student experience, you can try giving a reduced fraction. You may have to specify whether you are included or excluded to get a total that can have simplified fractions. Students new to the game or to fractions, keep fractions unreduced.
Fraction More
One game board.
Each team needs 12-16 squares of one color. (Or any markers you can tell apart!)
Before playing the game the first time, it is a great idea to see what some of the fractions look like. Roll the die, and practice making 1/16, 1/8, 1/4 and 1/2. Look for how repeating those amounts divides the board into that many pieces.
Start: both teams roll the fraction die (or spinner marked ½, ¼, ⅛, ⅛, 1/16, 1/16). The SMALLER roll goes first and fills that fraction of the squares.
Then teams take turns rolling the die and adding that fraction of their color to the grid. If there is not enough room, you lose your turn.
When the grid is full, the team with more than half wins.
Look for opportunities to describe the state of the board with fractions. What fraction of the whole board is blue? Is empty? Is red? Is filled? We’re looking for being able to use fraction names for quantities sensibly.
16ths Nim
Draw a 4x4 grid.
On each team’s turn, they can fill in one, two or three sixteenths. Count as they fill in the total part of the board filled.
The team that fills the board LOSES! Losing team chooses to go first or second in the next game.
Good for naming amounts, and getting to iterate. Kids typically find this pretty engaging. A bit easier than the fraction bar Nim.
Kids almost immediately started drawing other size grids, which is awesome! Work on naming those fractions.
The Deck
Over the course of the semester, the teachers work on building a deck of fraction cards. At first just number cards and bar model, then adding area and discrete models and more fractions over the course of the semester. (Here's
a GeoGebra applet I made to help.)
Concentration (Memory)
A deck of about 20 fraction cards from two halves of an index card. On one half of the card, the symbol for the fraction, like 12, and on the other a fraction bar representation.
I might make: ½, ⅓, ⅔, ¼, 2/4, ¾, ⅙. 2/6, 3/6, 4/6, ⅚, ⅛, 2/8, ⅜, 4/8, ⅝, 6/8, ⅞ or a subset of those.
Lay out the cards in a grid. On a player’s turn, they flip over 2 cards. If they match, they score them. In memory/concentration at home, you probably take another turn, but I recommend NOT doing that in school games, as it leads to less turns for the kids you want practicing more!
There is some strategy to concentration, in terms of flipping over a new card or known card first. You might talk about why you’re doing what you’re doing as you play.
It sometimes helps to have the kids make all the pairs before the first game, so they can see the matches.
This game was surprisingly popular with the kids, with them often requesting it up until the end of the semester.
Fraction Go Fish
Use your full deck of cards. At least 8 cards for each player.
Deal each player 4 cards. On your turn, ask ONE player for one fraction. If they have it, they give it to you. If they don’t they tell you to GO FISH, and you draw another card. At the end of your turn, if you have a match, you can play one match. No extra turns!
Play continues until someone goes out, or you run out of cards. If you run out of cards, everyone gets one more chance to ask for a card.
Be clear that you can match two pictures if they show the same fraction.
Equally popular with memory. Some groups focused on a set of numbers and one model for each number so players new if they were asking for a number or a picture.
1s Go Fish
Instead of looking for different representations, players look for fractions that add to one. Eg. ¾ and ¼. They don’t have to be the same representation. As usual, it’s good to practice making pairs before trying in the game. Make sure that all the cards in the deck have a match! Remove any that don’t.
Fraction Path
Make a path with 6 spaces on it, and a clearly marked start and finish. The goal is to fill in your path from smallest to biggest fraction. Once you place a fraction, you cannot move it.
Players take turns drawing a card. If you can, you have to write it in a spot. If you don’t have a spot that works, you lose your turn.
First player to fill their path from smallest to largest wins.
Great after activity: make a number line 0 to 1 with the numbers in your path, placed as accurately as possible.
I am a
huge fan of path games. Once learners are comfortable with the quantities and representations, it's great to move on to comparison, and even relative magnitude like the number line post activity. You can adjust the number of spaces, but 6 made for a game quick enough for our instructional time frame.
More or Less
Players each have a hand of 3 cards. On your turn, you call whether more or less wins. Players choose a card and hold it out face down. Everybody shows their card at the same time. If there’s a tie for least or most, just those players play another card from their hand with the same rule. Draw back up to 3 cards. After once through the deck, players with the most cards win.
Nothing wrong with War for number comparison, but this simple modification adds a lot of choice and strategy.
Fraction Dice War
Using the fraction dice from earlier in the semester. Teams roll two dice (or one twice). The team with a higher total gets a point. First team to five points wins.
Very simple. Encourage pictures to compare, or use the 16 grid and counters to show the fractions. A good early adding with different denominators game because you only have to change one one of the addends.
A Little Bigger
Materials: a deck of fraction cards.
Deal 5 cards to each player or team.
Player to the left of the dealer plays their smallest card.
Each subsequent player has to play a card greater or equal to that card. For example, if the card is ¼, you could play a picture of ¼ or a ⅓ or ½ or…
If you can’t play a bigger card, draw a card or take the top card off the pile.
When no one can play a bigger card, discard the stack. The last player who played starts the next stack with their smallest fraction.
First person out is the winner! (Or play until there is only one player left.)
Here We Go
Next semester I have a new class working with the same kids, so we'll be needing some new games. I'll still have them make a deck of fraction cards. But we'll need new games for fraction equivalence and more operations practice.
What are the fraction games you like? Share some back.
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