Round areas are fairly easy to divide into an equal number of pieces, all of the same shape, making them an ideal visual representation of a fraction. Use plain circles or tell kids that a circle is a pizza or a pie. Start by introducing the concept that the circle is one whole pizza. After dividing the pizza into a specific number of slices, have kids figure out what fraction of a pizza remains after they take a specific number of slices. For example, if the pizza has eight slices and the child takes two slices, there are six slices left. Therefore, 6/8 of the pizza remains. Tape adjoining slices together to illustrate that 3/4 is equal to 6/8.
Fraction blocks work for illustrating fractions, decimals and percents, and for switching between the three. A set of fraction blocks usually has a large square mat, 10 long strips that combine to make the whole square and 10 small blocks, which line up to make a strip. Kids can lay out fraction blocks on their fraction mats to visualize fractions. For example, to visualize 4/10, the child could set four of the long strips on the mat next to each other. The child could also make 72/100 by laying out seven strips and two blocks. They could then learn that 72/100 is 0.72 or 72 percent.
Squares of paper work well for illustrating fractions in which the denominator is a power of two. For example, to make 1/2, the student needs to fold the piece of paper in half, unfold it and color on one side of the fold. If the student folds the paper back along the first line and then in half again, suddenly two of the four areas are folded, meaning that 2/4 is equal to 1/2. One more fold turns the sections into eighths.
Small candies in a variety of colors make perfect items to manipulate when learning about fractions. Kids can sort candies into piles of the same color and then determine what fraction of the candies are each color. For example, say a child has five blue candies, seven yellow candies, three green candies and four orange candies. The child should count all the candies to get the denominator, which is 19 in this case. The child can then write what fraction of the candies are each color. For example, 7/19 are yellow and 4/19 are orange.