Cooking games are perfect for teaching fractions and their manipulation. For such a game, all you need is a recipe, though having actual ingredients helps students internalize the lesson. Give students a recipe that makes a set number of servings. This recipe should include several fractions with like denominators (1 1/4 cup sugar, 2 3/4 cup peanut butter, and so on). Tell them to change the recipe to add or subtract servings. Students then will need to add or subtract the ingredients in the recipe.
You can play tic-tac-toe with your students using like fractions. In such a game, the tic-tac-toe board is made of cells that contain mixed numbers with like denominators. The first student may place her “X” or “O” wherever she wishes. However, following that move, the next student must add or subtract (the teacher can choose each round) the mixed number that he chose and the mixed number that was previously chosen. Only if the student adds or subtracts correctly can he put his “X” or “O.”
Polls are particularly suited to being made into like fraction games. The like fraction in a poll game will be the number of students in your class. In such a game, each student comes up with a different yes-no question with which to survey the class. Examples of these questions are “Do you have a dog?” and “Do you have a cat?” Every student then goes around the class, gaining answers to his questions. The result will be a fraction. You can post the results around the room and then ask questions that manipulate the fractions in terms of addition and subtraction. For example, you may ask “How many more people have dogs than cats?” To further incorporate mixed numbers, allow the students to poll other classes as well. The students will likely find that after adding their results together, the solutions are mixed numbers. The interpretation of such results shows students the convenience of using mixed numbers to display results ("A total of 2 1/5 classes have cats").
A game for the active class is the relay race. In this game, you separate the class into two teams (you may want more teams if you have a big class; just expand the rules of the game to include more than two teams). The teams of students line up a specified distance from the blackboard. You write a different mixed number addition or subtraction problem on the board for each team. When you say "go" the students at the front of their teams' lines run to the board to solve the problem. When a student has finished a problem, you quickly write a new problem for that team on the board. You can continue this game for as long as you wish or set a time limit. The winning team is the one that has answered the most questions correctly.