A ratio is how a story compares two amounts, and a proportion is what lets you scale it. These free printable word problems share a total in a given ratio and scale recipes and rates up and down, with the numbers kept friendly so the reasoning stays visible.
Sharing in a ratio is the gentle start: twenty sweets split three-to-one is four equal parts, three of them one child's and one the other's. Seeing the ratio as a number of equal parts, rather than as two separate numbers, is what makes the sharing obvious and what carries over to every later proportion.
Why this sheet works
Scaling comes next. If three apples cost ninety cents, one costs thirty, and any number costs thirty times as many — the unit rate is the hinge every proportion turns on. A child who finds the per-one amount first can answer any version of the question without setting up a formal proportion at all.
How this one works
One question from a sheet like this one, worked a step at a time — with a sentence saying what just happened and why.
