Long Division

This activity was inspired by Montessori Math. The link is to the left of the blog. I took a bunch of her Easter Egg Hunt candy, along with 4 stuffed animal friends and 4 sheets of paper labeled 1, 10, 100, and 1000. We set up the friends in a circle and told them we were going to give them equal amounts of candy. Then I had her count out 4 candy pieces and put them on the units paper (the one labeled 1), 8 pieces on the tens paper, 4 pieces on the hundreds paper, and 8 pieces on the thousands paper. We said, "We have eight thousand four hundred and eighty-four pieces of candy to give away!" Then we "divided" the candy between the 4 friends (so, in big person terms, 8,484 divided by 4). From the thousands paper, we gave 1 candy piece to the first friend, 1 to the second, etc., until each of them had 2 pieces of candy for their "thousands place." Then we did the same with the pieces in the hundreds place, tens place, and units place. When all the candy was divided, we said, "Each friend gets two thousand one hundred and twenty-one pieces of candy." Then they gobbled it all up. She was like, "Again! Again!" It is now one of her favorite games.