Find Halves of Numbers

In this activity, we are going to use pictures to help us to halve numbers.

Look at this picture, which shows 8 cats.

The whole group has 8 cats.

To find half of the 8 cats, we need to split the group into two equal groups.

In the picture below, we have shown this by crossing out one group.

4 cats are crossed out and 4 cats are not crossed out.

½ of 8 is 4.

Another way of finding half of 8 is to draw 8 dots on a piece of paper, shared into 2 equal groups, maybe labelled group A and group B.

Count them one at a time into alternate groups until you've counted 8: 1 (to group A), 2 (to group B), 3, (A), 4 (B), 5 (A), 6 (B), 7 (A), 8 (B)

You should have 4 in group A and 4 in group B.   Half of 8 is 4.

Shall we have a go at some questions and see if we can find some more halves?

The cat below definitely likes the sound of that!