Sharing Eggs Equally

After our Easter egg hunt, the boys needed to share the eggs. Ioan and Finn automatically shared the eggs evenly in to two piles, as they had in previous years. Then I reminded them that this year, Cian, who was napping, would need an even share too.

Resources

Easter chocolates
Three plates or rings

Method

They set up two rings and a plate, to share their chocolates equally.

They worked through methodically, chocolate by chocolate. The first ones were the easiest as they had 3 bags of Freddos, which shared evenly with one bag each.

There were 4 Smarties eggs. They discovered that 4 cannot be divided exactly by 3, there was one egg each, but this time there was a remainder of 1. A remainder is the amount left over after division, it happens when the first number does not divide exactly by the other.

There were 6 kinder animals, Ioan knew straight away that 6 divided by 3, meant they would have 2 animals each.

Next they worked out how to share the 18 eggs. Finn knows that one of the factors of 18 is 3×6 or 6×3, but he’s only four, so doesn’t know that terminology. Instead he talks about it as ‘3 sixes” or “6 threes”.

There were 22 rabbits. They didn’t know how many ‘lots of three’ were in 22, so decided to group their chocolates in groups of three, then count how many groups of three they had.

Again they had a remainder of 1. They decided Daddy could have all the left over chocolate that didn’t divide exactly.

DfES Outcomes for EYFS and National Curriculum (2013)

Numeracy Year 1 programme of study

Number – multiplication and division

solve one-step problems involving multiplication and division, by calculating the answer using concrete objects, pictorial representations and arrays with the support of the teacher.