Let's Make Some Lime Juice!

Nandini Bajpai

After school, we play under the peepal tree. Langri-taang, poshampa, ankh-micholi, stapu, oonch-neech, pithoo, eye-spy and more.

Near the tree is Raju Uncle’s chai shop. When it is very hot, he leaves a jug of lime juice and glasses for us.

How do we divide the lime juice equally among the eight of us?
Aman has a piece of string in his pocket. We cut it so it is the same length as the drink inside the jug.

We fold the string into two. Then we fold the doubled string two more times. Now we have eight equal parts.
We keep the folded string against the jug and mark equal sections on the jug.

Manu and Sara lift the jug together and pour the lime juice carefully into glasses.

It is delicious, and we want some more. “You can make some,” Raju Uncle says.
“The recipe is on the board.”

Lime Juice Recipe
1/10 lemon juice
2/10 sugar syrup
7/10 cold water
Stir well and serve.

We have water, sugar syrup and lime juice, but we don’t know how to measure things out of ten.

Guria says, “We have eight sections marked. Let’s mark two more and we will have ten sections.”
Alok pours the lime juice till the first mark. I pour two portions of sugar syrup so that the mixture goes up to the third mark. Manu pours the cold water till the 10th mark.

We pour out eight glasses of lime juice.
We have some juice left. We pour it into a big glass for Raju Uncle.

“Shabash!” says Raju Uncle. “This is the best lime juice I have tasted. But it will taste even better with some hot pakoras.”
“Hooray! Thank you, Raju Uncle!”

Activity
Quarter.
Half.
Three-fourths.
Full.
Do you use these words sometimes?

Take one whole lemon and get an adult to cut it into 8 equal parts.
Do be careful with the knife. Each piece makes up one part of the whole. Each piece is also called a fraction. Now try to put the pieces back so that you get half a lemon.
How many pieces do you get?

Give your friend three-fourths of a lemon.
How many pieces does she get?
Let us say your brother wants half a lemon.
How many pieces make a half?
One part of eight = 1/8