(bright upbeat music) - Hello everyone, good morning.

It's so good to be with you this morning.

Our dryer in the teacher house isn't working.

So we are hanging everything up to dry today.

How do you dry your clothes at home?

Do you put them in a machine or hang them to dry?

I was just hanging Frisbee's doggy sweater to dry.

Oh, Frisbee you got my mail.

Thank you.

- You're welcome.

You can just call me the mail terrier.

- Okay Frisbee, thank you.

Another postcard for Ms. Post.

Let's see what it says.

Ms. Post, will you help me better understand fractions?

I understand them when my teacher is talking about them, but then, when I try to do the math problems by myself, I get really confused.

I remember the same thing happening to me when I was in school.

You know sometimes I understand things better when I know where they came from.

So, I'm going to tell you a little bit about why we even have fractions.

And then I'll show you a trick that I think might help.

A long, long time ago, people used to say the word fractus to talk about things being broken.

Well, over the years, we started using the word fraction to talk about parts of things and being able to break things into parts is very important.

Or we would never be able to share, would we?

- Sharing.

- I thought you were there Frisbee.

Would you like part of my cookie?

- Yes ma'am.

- Oh, this has chocolate in it.

Frisbee on second thought you probably shouldn't have any chocolate.

- Well, you can't tease me like that.

- How about a treat instead?

- Oh, yeah.

- Oh, okay.

There you go.

Okay, so fractions help us talk about parts of things.

They also let us count those parts, which means fractions are numbers.

Now, here is the trick to help you understand fractions.

Think about this clothesline, like you would a number line.

We've marked our unit of length from zero to one.

And let's say two of the teachers in the teacher house needed to hang up their clothes to dry.

Well, we would need to break the clothesline into two equal parts, or we would call those halves.

So I'm going to hang one of our note cards right in the middle of the clothesline.

Okay, now let's talk about the fraction.

The bottom number, or your denominator is the total number of equal parts that you have and we've divided our clothesline into two equal parts.

So, I'm going to write a two, as the bottom number of my fraction.

The top number or the numerator shows us how many parts we have out of the total number of parts.

So when I look at the clothesline, I have a one part out of the two.

So we are going to write a one as the numerator.

One half, now what if three of the teachers in the teacher house needed to hang up their clothes to dry?

Then we would need to break the clothesline into three equal parts or thirds.

So I'm going to hang up two note cards so that we can separate this into three parts.

Okay, so let's get some more practice writing fractions on our cards.

Now remember the bottom number or your denominator is the total number of equal parts that we have.

And we just divided our clothesline into three equal parts.

So I'm going to write a three.

The numerators show us how many parts we have out of the total number of parts.

So, when I look at the clothesline, when I get this far, I have moved along the clothesline one part out of three.

So I'm going to write a one as the numerator.

And when I get one more jump over now I've moved two parts out of the three.

So I'm going to write a two as the numerator.

Thank you so much for the postcard.

I hope today's lesson helped you think about fractions as numbers on a number line.

Remember, keep a positive mindset, grow every day by reading and asking questions.

There's nothing you can't do if you put your mind to it.

I'll see you soon, bye.

- Ms. Post that fell into the hamper.

Help me out.

- (laughs) Frisbee.

- Oh, thank you.

♪ Its time to rise and shine ♪