Sharing lollies!

This afternoon we participated in a maths problem solving lesson about sharing lollies. We have realised that we use fractions a lot in every day life, when we are cooking, sharing food and different items. This was the problem we solved today:

Maara and her three friends are going to share a licorice lace. If the lace is 12cm long, what length of the lace will each friend get? What fraction will they get?

2 other friends approach Maara and would like some of the lace too. How can they split the lace (which has already been cut into quarters) between 6 people equally.

We solved it by cutting up a real lolly lace. At first we thought we could just cut the lace into 6 pieces (sixths) but then we realised that this was not possible because we had already chopped the lace into quarters.

We know that each of our quarters need to be the same size. The width of the lace was relatively consistent so we measured the length to create equal pieces.

We cut each of the quarters into three pieces, so that we had 12 pieces altogether (or twelfths). We then shared these between six people and each got 2/12 of the lace.