A Fun Introduction to Division: The Group and Share Picnic!

Learning about division is a big step, and our free online game, “Group and Share,” is the perfect way to make it fun and easy to understand. If you’re looking for an interactive maths game that helps children in Key Stage 1 visualize the concept of sharing, it’s time to join our animal friends for a picnic!

This game turns the abstract idea of division into a hands-on activity. Children are given a pile of sweets and a number of friends to share them with. By dragging and dropping the sweets into equal groups, they physically act out the process of division. Then, to reinforce the learning, they are asked to identify how many sweets each friend gets and how many are left over—a perfect introduction to remainders!

How to Play

1. Start the Picnic: Click the “Start a Picnic” button to get a new number of sweets and a group of friendly animals to share with.
2. Share the Sweets: Click (or tap on a mobile device) and drag the sweets from the top area down to the drop zones below each animal. Try to share them out equally!
3. Work it Out: Once you have shared the sweets as best you can, look at your groups. How many sweets did each friend get? How many are left over in the top box?
4. Enter Your Answer: Type your answers into the two boxes at the bottom.
5. Check Your Work: Click the “Check Answer” button to see if you got it right!

Learning Objectives & Curriculum Links

The Group and Share Picnic is a valuable educational tool designed to support key learning goals within the UK’s Key Stage 1 (KS1) maths curriculum.

• Target Age Group: This game is ideal for children in Year 1 and Year 2 (ages 5-7). It provides a crucial, foundational understanding of division before they move on to more formal written methods in KS2.
• Key Maths Focus:
  • Division as Sharing: The core of the game directly supports the Year 2 curriculum objective to “solve problems involving multiplication and division, using materials, arrays, repeated addition, mental methods, and multiplication and division facts, including problems in contexts.”
  • Understanding Remainders: By seeing that sometimes there are sweets left over that cannot be shared equally, children gain an intuitive and concrete understanding of what a remainder is.
  • Problem Solving: The hands-on nature of the game encourages children to use a trial-and-error approach to solve a problem. If they see one group has more than another, they can move the sweets around to correct it, building problem-solving skills.

Tips for Teachers and Parents

This interactive division game is a brilliant resource for making a tricky concept feel simple and fun.

• For Teachers: Use Group and Share on your interactive whiteboard as a fantastic whole-class introduction to a lesson on division by sharing. You can have students come up to the board to drag the sweets and encourage a class discussion about what to do with the leftovers. It’s also a perfect independent activity for tablets during a maths rotation.
• For Parents: This game is a wonderful way to introduce the idea of division and remainders to your child at home. It provides a visual model that is much easier to understand than abstract numbers on a page. You can play alongside them, counting the groups together and talking about why some sweets are “left over.”

Enjoy the picnic! Don’t forget to explore our other free maths games for primary-aged children.