Hands-on work with the common fraction

Numbers are abstractions. For young mathematicians, fractions can be some of the most baffling abstractions ever. Even the way we write fractions is baffling: a one with a bar and a four beneath it is read as ‘one fourth’ and ‘one fourth’ is actually a number. What on earth can this baffling set of symbols really represent? Even before children are taught that decimals, ratios, and percentages are also fractions, they need support to understand how the strange configurations we call common fractions work.