Use this teaching resource when teaching your students about fractions.

Students imagine they are going on a picnic with one other person. The worksheet provides images of a number of different ‘picnic’ foods. Students choose which items they would like to eat, then colour and cut these out. For each food, they then decide whether they would eat the whole item or cut it in half to share with the other person. They glue their foods onto the plate. (It is recommended that the plate template be printed on A3 paper to allow plenty of room to glue the foods).

Use this resource to reinforce the understanding that one-half is one of two equal parts of a whole. Lead students to discover that some shapes can only be fairly shared when cut one way, (e.g. the pear), while others can be halved a number of ways, (e.g. the sandwich). In order to cut the items in half fairly accurately, encourage students to fold the item into matching halves before cutting.

If students decide to cut the cake in half, they could decorate each half with strawberries – providing an opportunity to think about equal shares of this collection.

Integrate this maths activity with a writing exercise. Students write about their picnic on the template provided (which includes vocabulary prompts).