Saturday, April 28, 2012

Estimation Class Book

Happy Saturday!
A few days ago I was looking around Barnes and Nobles and came across this great book! It’s called “Great Estimations” by Bruce Goldstone.

This book is full of real life pictures of different objects such as jellybeans, doll shoes, cheerios and bugs for students to practice estimating. It also teaches some little tricks about how to be a good estimator. And, it’s only $6.99! It also has some really good pictures for addressing number concepts. What does 10 cherries look like? What does 100 cherries look like?

This little book inspired an idea for a fun and easy class estimation book! (Don't worry it's all ready for you!)


First, give each student (or pair of students) a book page and an answer circle. It would probably help if you went ahead and numbered the pages and answer circles.

Next, have the students find a group of objects to photograph in your classroom (technology use!) I chose crayons for my example. But think of all of objects in your classroom your kids could estimate (pencils, paperclips, books, math manipulatives, paper, magazines....)

Have them photograph the object and then they need to count their objects and record the answer on the backside of the answer circle. Once everyone has photographed their objects, print out the pictures and have students glue their picture to the book page, add their name and fill in the blank.


Tape all of the answer circles on the answer page (it would be really cute if you printed the circles on colored paper.) The estimation answers should be written under each dot. This will create a little flip answer page. So you can be sure that there is no peeking : )

Now use the book! Have students take out a piece of paper and go through each page of the book and have students estimate how many objects are on each page. Then, flip to the answer page and check! How much fun!

This will be a classbook that your class will enjoy making and learning from. Maybe you could even loan it to another classroom and test their estimation skills?
I am working on making a better and updated version of this book to share soon! I hope this is useful to you or maybe even inspired some other ideas : )
 Enjoy the rest of your weekend!