Convert Fractions to Decimals & Percents: FREE Puzzles
Learn strategies to convert fractions to decimals & percents, plus grab a cute set of pizza matching puzzles to practice this math skill!
Ask my nine-year-old boy what he wants for dinner, and you are always going to get the same answer:
Pizza!
He is a creature of habit so each time pizza enters our home, he wants it with pepperoni.
Knowing his deep love for pizza, I decided to create some pizza puzzles for him. As he focuses on decimals and their relationship with fractions and percents…I knew he could use a little more practice. So this week he will be using these pizza puzzles to convert fractions to decimals, and then decimals to percents.
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Note: This is a guest post from Rachel of You’ve Got This Math.
Pizza Puzzle Set Prep-Work:
These fun pizza puzzles require just a little prep-work, then your kids will be ready to convert fractions to decimals and percents.
- First, print off the puzzles that you would like to use on card stock paper.
- Next, cut on the black lines so that each pizza is divided into three parts: a fraction, decimal, and percent (each representing the same value)
- Make sure your kiddos have a place to work out the problems, like a whiteboard, and you are ready to go!
Strategies to Convert Fractions to Decimals:
There are so many different ways to convert fractions to decimals. Here are a few ways you can use to teach this math concept to your children.
Changing the Denominator to 100:
One easy way is to change a fraction’s denominator to 100.
Factions like one-half make this strategy easy.
1/2 x 50/50 = 50/100
This means that the decimal fifty hundredths and can be written like 0.50! But it is also important to understand that 50/100 is equivalent to 5/10. Therefore, you can also say five-tenths or 0.5.
Divide the Fraction to Convert to a Decimal:
When children learn about fractions they need to understand that fractions are also division problems.
Activities like these word problems can help children see how division relates to fractions.
Once this understanding is developed, changing any fraction to a decimal is as simple as division.
When you have a fraction where the denominator does not equally go into 100, this strategy is the way to go.
With 9/13 it is best to divide.
Our kiddos are so used to seeing the bigger number inside the division sign, that they often do the same thing when trying to solve a problem like this.
When teaching this concept, I repeat over and over that the numerator goes IN….they both have those prominent “n” sounds.
To solve these pizza puzzles, kids need to divide out to four digits.
This way they can round to the nearest thousandths place and find the matching pizza piece.
How to Convert Decimals to Percents:
Once a fraction is converted to a decimal, it is quite easy to change it to a percent.
All you need to do is multiply the decimal by 100 and then add a percent sign.
Before you simply tell your children how to quickly solve the problem, I highly suggest you do activities that help children visualize why this works.
Most kids will know that when you multiply a number by 100, you are just moving the decimal two places to the right.
Though this is a great rule, and it makes solving the problems easy, children need to understand why this works and be able to visualize it.
As an example, we convert 0.556 to a percent like this:
0.556 x 100 = 55.6%
I hope your hungry, pizza-loving students enjoy this fun way to practice converting fractions to decimals, and decimals to percents.
Looking for more practice? Try this simple game to convert fractions to decimals!
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