Fractions Squares: A DIY Math manipulative to teach Common Core standards

I have really been inspired this week by my fellow bloggers out there.  It just amazes me how one short post with a quick idea can get my creative juice flowing again!  It made me realized I should post more often, even if I only have one small item to share.
My students are finishing up with adding and subtracting fractions this week with a little performance task making trail mix using fractional amounts.  Next week we tackle multiplying fractions! I know that multiplying fractions is much easier than adding and subtracting them, but the Common Core standards are very clear and specific that students need to not just have computational accuracy, they need to understand the process.  I had to do a lot of reading up on this because, quite frankly, I was only taught to multiply fractions using a rote algorithm, so I never learned this important step.
      In books like Curriculum Based Assessment: Fractions by Michael Battista, the author uses squares to show the process of scaling.  I wanted to create a manipulative that students could use over and over again to demonstrate the process of scaling and truly understand that multiplying a fraction by another fraction results in a smaller number than your started with (which is, frankly, counter-intuitive to students' experience multiplying whole numbers).  The resulting do-it-yourself manipulative (which I called fraction squares) is explained in the You Tube video above.