Activities and Learning Reviews

Someone's in the kitchen with Auntie Pasta, cooking up pizza-specific ways to teach younger children the basics of beginning fractions. This game for two to four players includes a spinner and a playing board with circles divided into halves, thirds, or quarters. Players receive cardboard pieces of pizza in different sizes (with corresponding numerical fractions on the back). The sections are placed on the circles during the game to create complete pizzas, with tiny cardboard pizza boxes to cover each completed pie. The game requires very little reading (just a few basic words on the spinner), and it's a good way to introduce the concepts of pie-chart fractional divisions as well as simpler fractional concepts. Adaptable for preschoolers as well as for older siblings, it's a good choice for home schoolers or family game night--with pizza for dinner, of course! --Marcie Bovetz