Trick of the butterfly to teach adding fractions to children

If your child is in the fourth grade of primary school (9-10 years), maybe he has already started studying fractions . And there are many ways to explain how you operate with them. But the simplest thing is to resort to little tricks to simplify everything and make mathematics more fun. We explain t

If your child is in the fourth grade of primary school (9-10 years), maybe he has already started studying fractions. And there are many ways to explain how you operate with them. But the simplest thing is to resort to little tricks to simplify everything and make mathematics more fun.

We explain to you what is the butterfly trick to teach children to add fractions in a very simple way. We also warn you of two more variants that you can find.

How is the trick of the butterfly to add fractions

1. To apply the trick of the butterfly you must place the fractions with which you will work and imagine the wings of a butterfly. Drawings facing numbers in this way. For example, we add in this way 4/3 and 5/2. See how the butterfly's wings are drawn:

2. Then draw the butterfly's antennae. Each antenna will indicate the result of a multiplication. The antenna on the right is the result of multiplying the numbers of the right wing in this case, 5x3, which gives us 15) and the left antenna the result of multiplying the numbers of the left wing (in our case, 4x2, which gives us 8 ).

3. Once you have your two results next to the antennas, you draw the body of the butterfly, and inside you take the result of multiplying the two numbers below, the denominators. In this case, the result is 6.

4. Now we calculate the final result in this way: the numerator will be the result of adding the two numbers of the antennas (8 + 15). And the denominator, the number we point to in the body of the butterfly (6).

Trick of the butterfly when the opposite numbers are not of the same family

But be careful ... If the numbers faced when drawing the wings of the butterfly are not even or odd, but a pair is mixed with an odd one, you must do one more operation When you have all the numbers, with your final fraction, you must calculate half the numerator and half the denominator ... look:

How to add fractions with the same denominator

The simplest operation between fractions happens when the denominator of both fractions It is the same. In that case, forget the butterfly. The only thing that you will have to do is to place as the final denominator the same denominator that is repeated in the two fractions. The final numerator will be the sum of the two numerators of the fractions you add.