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How to help your Class 5 child with fractions at home

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To help your child with fractions at home, you do not need to remember any rules from your own school days. The NCERT Maths book for Class 5, Maths Mela (first edition June 2025; schools use the Reprint 2026-27 this year), teaches fractions with things every kitchen has: chocolate, parathas, chikki and paper.

This guide follows Chapter 2, "Fractions", in the book's order, with one short activity per idea. The book is the authority; the activities are ours.

The book's "About the Book" pages ask parents and elder siblings to follow its order: real objects first, then pictures, and only slowly the formal rules, which children appreciate better once they understand the idea.

What Class 5 learns about fractions

Chapter 2 builds five ideas:

Activity 1: two rotis, one question

The chapter opens with a puzzle. Tamanna has two chocolates, a large one and a small one, and claims a third of the first is more than half of the second. Because the bars differ in size, she can be right.

Try it with one big roti and one small roti. Cut a third of the big one and half of the small one, and put them side by side. Then ask: "When is half always bigger than a third?" The answer the chapter wants is: only when both come from the same whole. The rest of the chapter rests on this idea.

Activity 2: make a fraction kit from paper

The textbook has a fraction kit printed at the back of the book. If those pages are missing, make one. Cut five paper strips of the same length. Keep one strip whole, and fold the others into halves, thirds, quarters and sixths. Cut along the folds and write the fraction on every piece.

Now ask your child to build one whole in different ways: two quarters and a half; three thirds; one third and four sixths. Each combination that fits the whole strip exactly shows that those pieces add up to 1.

Activity 3: the same part, new names

Draw a rectangle, split it into three equal columns and shade one: that is 1/3. Draw one line across the middle and count again: the shaded part is now 2 of 6 pieces. With two lines it is 3/9, with three lines 4/12. The book's Sameer does exactly this.

Ask your child what happens to the top and bottom numbers each time. Let them find the pattern (both are multiplied by the same number) before you name it. Then try it with 2/5: one cut gives 4/10.

Activity 4: who ate more?

Same denominator. Sevi ate 1/3 of a chikki and Shami ate the other 2/3. Two pieces of the same size are more than one, so Shami ate more.

Same numerator. One child ate 4/6 of a paratha and another ate 4/5. Both ate 4 pieces, but a sixth is smaller than a fifth, so 4/6 is less than 4/5. Thinking that a bigger bottom number means a bigger fraction is what the Class 6 NCERT book calls "a common mistake". Cut two equal rotis, one into 5 pieces and one into 6, and let your child hold a piece of each.

Activity 5: more than one whole

At dinner, cut parathas into halves and count aloud: one half, two halves, three halves. Five halves make two whole parathas and one half: 5/2 = 2 1/2. Then try quarters: nine quarters are 2 1/4.

Draw a number line on the floor with chalk from 0 to 3, mark the halves, and let your child jump along it, as the book's paratha story does on paper.

Activity 6: is it more or less than half?

Before any working, teach the habit of asking two questions: is it more or less than 1? Is it more or less than 1/2?

7/8 falls just short of a whole, while 8/6 goes past it, so 8/6 is bigger with no calculation at all. 3/6 is exactly half and 5/8 is more than half, so 5/8 is bigger. The book calls these comparisons "with reference to 1" and "with reference to 1/2".

Mistakes to watch for

Five questions to ask, with answers

  1. Which is bigger, 1/4 or 1/3 of the same roti?
  2. Fill in the blank: 2/5 = ?/10.
  3. Seven halves of a paratha make how many parathas?
  4. Which is bigger, 5/9 or 4/9?
  5. Without working it out: is 6/11 more or less than half?

Answers: 1) 1/3, because sharing among 3 gives bigger pieces than sharing among 4. 2) 4. 3) 3 1/2. 4) 5/9: five ninths are more than four ninths. 5) More: half of 11 is 5 1/2, and 6 is more than that.

Where to go next

For practice on paper, print our free Class 5 fractions worksheet or browse all Class 5 worksheets. In Class 6, the next book, Ganita Prakash, takes the same ideas on to adding and subtracting fractions: see NCERT Class 6 Maths Chapter 7, Fractions, explained. Before choosing a maths app, read how to judge an AI study app.

Where CMDLearn fits

CMDLearn is building an AI tutor for Classes 1 to 10 in Hindi, Marathi and English that teaches from the NCERT books in this hands-on way. It is still in development and no families use it yet. Join the waitlist to hear when early access to the AI tutor opens.

Sources

The characters, examples and the order of ideas are from the NCERT chapter. The activities, questions and answers are our own; every number was checked by calculation.