Let's say you go to a pot luck dinner and they have four pies (cherry, apple, blueberry, and pumpkin). Each pie is cut up into eight pieces and you have one piece from each pie. What part of a full pie did you eat in all?
4 * 1/8 = 1/2 Since you had four pieces and each piece was one-eighth of a pie, you had four-eighths of a pie which can be reduced to the fraction one-half.
2 * 5 * 1/12 = 10/12 = 5/6 Since you had two pieces from five pizzas (a total of 10 pieces) and each piece is one-twelfth of a pizza, you ate ten-twelfths of a pizza which can be reduced to five-sixths of a pizza.
Now we will practice multiplying wholes and fractions.