Estimation...Cookie Station Another fun EATING activity.

Estimation is one of the hardest skills that I have to teach. My students firmly believe estimation means to count. That is not it at all. I want them to use the information they know to predict a great answer. NOT just GUESS!

We do this cookie activity to introduce estimation. Each student gets a cookie. I began by rambling off that there are 1 billion chocolate chips in 1 cookie, 300, 295. Of course the students are like no way. They have a pretty great understanding of spatial sense. I then introduce the term estimation and we discuss. The way we use prior knowledge with this activity is by counting the chocolate chips on top of the cookie, therefore we know that it has to be more then that number. I have the student write their number on one side of the paper towel with crayons. Another lesson inside of that is because they feel as when their answer is wrong they can erase it and change it AFTER we count.

They then began to break the cookie up sorting the cookie from the chocolate chips. They group them to make the chocolate chips easier to count. Some students get really picky and refuse to have any sight of a piece of the cookie in their chocolate chip pile.

They will then count the chocolate chips again and write the correct answer on the opposite side of the paper towel. They get to see how close they were or how far away. Believe it or not a few students hit it right on the nose. So awesome! Of course they get to eat the crumbs that are left. They truly get a better understanding of estimation. Who wouldn't with food involved?