Fair Share Kitchen

About Fair Share Kitchen

Pibbit runs a little café, and his animal friends are hungry. Swipe to cut pizzas, cakes and chocolate bars, then serve them. If the pieces are fair, everyone cheers. If not, the friend with the smallest slice holds it up and says so. Later orders ask for a fraction, like two thirds of a pizza, and get judged by how much is on the plate, so two fourths counts as one half. The last levels hide the plates under covers and ask which fraction is bigger from the numbers alone. Twelve levels, from halves to sixths.

Fair Share Kitchen is one of our numbers & maths games for kids. This one plays in the iPhone and iPad app rather than in the browser, but 33 of our games are free to play right here — browse the full library to find them.

How to Play

• Count the friends at the counter.
• Swipe across the food to cut it. Cut a pizza through the middle; cut a chocolate bar along its lines.
• Press Serve. If someone gets less, put it back together and try again.
• For orders, cut the food, then drag the right number of pieces onto the plate.

Tips & Tricks

• For four friends, two cuts straight through the middle make four fair pieces.
• Thirds can’t be made with straight cuts across a pizza. Cut from the middle out to the crust three times.
• When comparing fractions with the same top number, the one with fewer pieces has the bigger pieces.

What Kids Learn

Fair Share Kitchen starts where fractions really start: sharing something fairly. Before a child can make sense of 1/3, they need to know what “three equal parts” looks like, and that equal means the same amount, not just the same number of pieces. Cutting a pizza for three friends and watching one of them complain makes that stick.

From there it moves to naming fractions (serve two thirds of the pizza), to equivalence (the pizza is cut in eight, so how many slices make a half?), and to comparing fractions. In the last levels the plates are covered, so the child has to reason from the numbers and then lift the covers to check.

• Splitting a shape into equal parts
• Naming halves, thirds, fourths, fifths and sixths
• Comparing fractions with the same top or bottom number
• Seeing that different fractions can be the same amount

Curriculum links

For teachers and homeschooling parents, here is where Fair Share Kitchen lines up with what children are taught at school:

• Common Core 1.G.A.3: Partition circles and rectangles into two and four equal shares
• Common Core 2.G.A.3: Partition circles and rectangles into two, three or four equal shares; equal shares need not have the same shape
• Common Core 3.NF.A.1: Understand a fraction 1/b as one part when a whole is split into b equal parts, and a/b as a such parts
• Common Core 3.NF.A.3.A: Understand two fractions as equivalent if they are the same size
• Common Core 3.NF.A.3.D: Compare two fractions with the same numerator or the same denominator

What Age Is Fair Share Kitchen For?

Made for ages 6 to 10, first to fourth grade. Six- and seven-year-olds play the first five levels, which are all about fair cutting and match first- and second-grade geometry. The ordering, comparing and equivalent-fraction levels line up with third grade, and the covered-plate comparisons will make some fourth graders stop and think.

Tips for Parents

When someone says “not fair”, ask your child how they could tell. Bigger pieces versus more pieces is the whole point.

Ask “would you rather have one third or one fourth of a pizza?” before playing the comparing levels. Many children pick one fourth because four is bigger.

Let your child explain why two fourths is the same as one half. Saying it out loud is where it clicks.

Try It Without a Screen

• Cut a sandwich into halves two different ways (rectangles and triangles) and check they are the same amount.
• Share a chocolate bar by counting squares, so every person gets the same number.
• Fold paper strips into halves, fourths and eighths and line them up to see which fractions match.

Fair Share Kitchen — Frequently Asked Questions