It is Thanksgiving Day and there is much to done! Joy and Eddie jump out of bed ready to help her mom since Thanksgiving is at their house this year. There is lots of food to prepare before their cousins and grandparents arrive. There is their Uncle Joe and Aunt Lisa and their three kids Elizabeth, Rachel and Lee, Aunt Carol. Then there's and Uncle Hubert with Josh, and Uncle Matt and Aunt Kristen and their three kids, Cade, Violet and Lucas, plus their grandparents. That is a total of 15 people who are coming to Joy and Eddie’s house today, and they can’t wait. They have to help peel the potatoes, husk the corn, set the table, and cut the pies all before their guests arrived. 

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“Mom, what should we do first?” asks Joy and her and Eddie arrive in the kitchen to their mom, who is already starting on the turkey. “I actually have a list of things you guys could do to help me out before everyone gets here, the first thing is peeling the potatoes.” “Okay! I bet I will peel more potatoes than Joy.” Exclaims Eddie as he is already grabbing the potatoes getting ready to peel.

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Joy and Eddie start peeling, they have to peel a total of 15 potatoes. Eddie claims that he has peeled 3/5th of the potatoes and Joy has peeled 1/3rd, so they have 1 potato left that they need to peel. “That doesn’t make sense, that would mean we only peeled 4 potatoes, and we’ve done more than that!” stated Joy.

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“No Joy, that’s not how adding fractions works." Eddie goes to grab a white board the kids draw on sometimes. "In order to add fractions the denominators have to be the same. So a common denominator they both would have is 15. You get this by multiplying 3/5th by 3/3 and 1/3rd by 5/5. By doing this you get 9/15th and 5/15th. These you can add and realize that we have peeled 14/15 of the potatoes" He shows this on the chalk board by doing the multiplication and also drawing pictures of the potatoes and spliting them into groups to show they are the same. so we need to peel one more potato and then we’ll be done.” “Oh that makes sense!” says Joy “I call the last one!”

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Joy and Eddie rush off to start the next task, husking the corn, for this they need to husk 10 ears of corn. They get done and Joy decides she wants to try to add using fractions, and pulls out the white board from before. She draw's on the board the 10 ears of corn, and that she had husked 1/2 of the corn, and Eddie husked 5/10ths. Since 10 represents the total number of corn they need to husk she keeps the 5/10th, but multiplies 1/2 by 5/5 so that the denominator is 10 so she can add them properly. By doing this she gets 5/10, so she adds 5/10+5/10 to get 10/10, they husked all the corn, and each did exactly half. “ Great job Joy!” says Eddie “and just in time, Aunt Carol and Uncle Hubert and Josh are here.

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 They go to say hi to their uncle, aunt, and cousin. Uncle Hubert and their father settle in and start to watch football, while Aunt Carol helps their mom in the kitchen with the stuffing and other foods, Eddie starts explaining to Joy that 1/5 of their guests are here, and how they should get back to work before the rest start to show up. “What are you guys talking about?” asks Josh. “Just discussing fractions, I’m helping Joy work on adding fractions as we help our mom get ready for dinner.” “That sounds like fun, can I help you guys?” “Of course! We still have a lot to do before everyone gets here, we better get started again.” States Joy.

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“What’s the next thing we need to do?” asks Josh. “Let me look at the list, I think we’re done with food but now we have to start helping set the table” says Eddie. “That’s perfect, I can do plates, Josh can do silverware, and Eddie, you can get the cups out.”

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They start setting the table, and they are going to set 20 spots. Already, Joy has all of her plates done, while Josh has put silverware at 4/5th of the spots and Eddie is straggling behind with just 1/4th of the cups on the table” Eddie starts to explain “Joy, you already have all the plates, so that is 20/20th done out of the total.” “I have done 4/5th of the silverware, so would that mean I am done with 80/20ths?” asks Josh. Eddie shakes his head and giggles, “That can be a common mistake, since I multiplied Joy’s fraction by 20, so you went and did the same to the top, but you didn’t multiply the same number on the bottom.

In order to find equivalent fractions you have to multiply by the same number on both the top and the bottom. We would take 4/5th and multiply it by 4/4ths to get a 16/20th, which gives us our denominator of 20” explains Eddie. “Okay, I think I am starting to get this, so since you are only done with 1/4th of the cups that would be equivalent to 5/20th, because you multiply 1/4 times 5/5, because that’s what you have to multiply 4 by, in order to get a denominator of 20, right? Says Josh, “Exactly!” Eddie joyfully answers.

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