How Four Friends Can Share Seven Brownies

"How can four friends share seven brownies equally? How many brownies will each person get?"  

That is the problem we worked through today in math.  We started out by discussing it, drawing diagrams, and cutting paper brownies until we solved it...

I was impressed at how much effort the students put into solving this problem.  Perhaps the subject of sharing brownies is of very high interest?  :)

After some independent and partner work, the majority of the class came up with 3 answers:

1) Each friend gets 1 and 1/2 and1/4 of a brownie.

2) Each friend gets 1 and 3/4 of a brownie.

3) Each friend gets 7/4 of a brownie.

Were they all right?  Yep!  How?

Third grade... can you explain to your grown ups at home how ALL of these answers are correct?