How many of you have gone into a store and had to estimate if you had enough money with you to cover what you were buying? With the current economy, I would imagine often. We recently had to purchase some sod, but how much did we need? Or estimating how much food to buy for a party. Most adults don’t realize that we estimate all the time and we are usually pretty good at it. Did you ever wonder how you got so good?
Estimating or making a guess (sometimes it’s called an educated guess) is a skill children develop with practice. Being able to estimate helps children develop a sense of numbers and how numbers relate to the world around them. It also shows a mastery of many skills from number sense to measuring.
Children aren’t naturally good at estimating, but they like being able to play guessing games, so why not make learning estimating a game. Like how many times they can hop on one foot or how many baby steps is it to the couch from the kitchen. Giving children a tangible activity will help make it fun. It isn’t important that they estimate the exact number. What you are striving for is for the estimated number to get closer over time (I’m not talking a week - it’s more like over months). It will no longer just be a guess, it will be a reasonable, logical number based on their experience and understanding of numbers.
When we did our dinosaur foot print, we had Sam estimate the number of his foot prints that would fit inside the tyrannosaurus Rex foot print. He said “10” but once we started doing it, he could see it was going to be more than 10 so he revised it. That was great – he saw that his thinking was off but it didn’t throw him, he just made an adjustment. So if your child guesses are way off, let them go with it and change the number if they want. Sometimes they realize right away that their number is too high or too low. The number that they estimate isn’t important, nor is being correct. The important thing is the thinking involved and getting close to the actual number over time. So make it fun, do it often and encourage the process. Every step is a step closer to mastery.
When we did our dinosaur foot print, we had Sam estimate the number of his foot prints that would fit inside the tyrannosaurus Rex foot print. He said “10” but once we started doing it, he could see it was going to be more than 10 so he revised it. That was great – he saw that his thinking was off but it didn’t throw him, he just made an adjustment. So if your child guesses are way off, let them go with it and change the number if they want. Sometimes they realize right away that their number is too high or too low. The number that they estimate isn’t important, nor is being correct. The important thing is the thinking involved and getting close to the actual number over time. So make it fun, do it often and encourage the process. Every step is a step closer to mastery.
Remember to make it fun!
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