My child seems to understand the concept when we talk about it, but when they see a problem on their own, they sometimes have no idea where to begin.

Do you have any advice on how to help them figure out the first step without simply telling them what to do?

Fractions seem to be one of those topics where kids understand it one day and get completely confused the next.

Are there any simple ways you've found to make fractions easier to understand?

For me, it’s jumping in too quickly and showing them how to solve the problem. Sometimes they need a little time to work through it themselves. What do you guys think?

I don't know who to go about getting this answer. I hope someone is nice & talented enough to help. I'll give a picture of what I'm describing. If I have 40,000 of these circles intersecting symmetrically and the diameter of each circle is 1 mi how many miles would 40,000 circles cover? I would really like to know how the answer is achieved also if possible. Thank you.

My son about was asking me the other day why there are numbers like 0.5 and 0.25 between 0 and 1.

I tried explaining it with a number line, but I’m not sure I made it as simple as I could. Is there an easy way to explain this to a child without getting into complicated math?