What's a fraction?

I remember when I first started to learn about fractions and decimals.  I used to stress about them constantly because I had such difficulty understanding them.  I was told over and over again that fractions and decimals went hand and hand.  For whatever reason I just didn't see the connection.  My teacher used to hold up flash cards with fractions and their corresponding decimals.  We were drilled until we memorized what decimal went to what fraction.  I never did memorize them, in fact I never even tried.  I didn't understand the core of why they were linked together.  Why would I care about memorization?  Looking back I wish my teachers would have spent more time showing us more in depth what the connection was.  Eventually when we started learning place values things came together.  I remember thinking, Duh!  Once I knew the place values in decimals were the denominators in fractions I began to feel more connected.  

Manipulatives are wonderful tools to show students the guts of mathematics.  I am a visual learner so for me it is particularly helpful.  I have faint memories of some manipulative activities but I don't think they were used as heavily as today.  So far in my observations I have noticed a huge emphasis on the use of manipulatives.  The students seem to love using them because they get to play as well.  Most of the time the teachers give them some free play time before the lesson starts. I think it is a great way to calm down the kids and allow them to focus.

This video uses drawings as a way to give students a visual of how fractions work.  I think either drawing it out or using manipulatives is the most straight forward approach.  I found this video at a home schooling website.  The subsection talks about how common the struggle to grasp fractions is.  I was relived to see that my situation wasn't unique to me.  This site also talks about the benefits of using manipulatives.