ABSTRACT
There are two reasons for a separate chapter on fractions, decimals and percentages. The first is that in order to understand these ideas, children need to make a significant shift in their thinking. Pre-school experience of number is mainly about:
counting objects, often with little reference to a zero;
numbers as labels (buses, telephone numbers, house numbers);
fractions as language labels (‘I can only eat half this apple’ where half is often a very rough approximation, mathematically speaking).
