Awesome Estimation

We have added estimation as a new part to our math learning every day.  We spend about 5 minutes at the beginning of math visiting www.esitmation180.com to estimate some pretty tough things.  Yesterday, we felt SO successful as estimators because we used many things we already knew to figure out the EXACT answer.  Can you believe it?!?  It was SO exciting to see that the answer revealed was the same number as our estimation/(calculation)! 

We started on Monday with this:

Our estimations ranged from 15-50. 

Tuesday's picture was this:

We used information we knew to make our best guess. We knew there were 10 tissues in each small package, we used the arrow of our mouse to "meausure" this tissue box and thought it was about 8 arrows.  We know 8, 10x is 80 so that was our estimation.

Answer was... 85.  SO CLOSE!

Wednesday's picture was this:

Again, we used what we knew to make a good guess.  We knew there were 85 tissues in each box.  We figured out that even though we could only see 8 boxes, there HAD to be 12 because there were some hidden that you couldn't see.  We knew we couldn't count by 85's because that is too hard. (Although, someone did suggest using a calculator we decided that wouldn't be an estimation.)  We thought that 80 was a close enough number to count by, so we used our number grid to count by 8's 12x.  Then, we added a zero because it was supposed to be 80.  Next, we went back and counted by 5's 12x for the extra 5 tissues we didn't count before. We added those two numbers together by using what we know about counting by 10's... and... guessed the correct number!  WOW! 

The first graders absolutely LOVE estimating and are so excited to see what we're going to be thinking about each day.