Monday 22 February 2016

Hearts In A Jar ~ An Estimation Lesson

Just before Valentine's Day, I brought jars filled with hearts into the classrooms.  One jar was visibly larger and the other jar was visibly smaller.


The Jars

The children were drawn to the jars. We looked at the jars and made some observations.  The jar with the gold lid was smaller while the jar with the checked lid was larger.  We opened up the jar with the gold lid and counted the hearts. There were 46. Would the other jar have more than 46 hearts or less than 46 hearts?  The children agreed that the jar with the checked lid would have more hearts.

How many hearts were in the larger jar?  We were all going to get a chance to estimate the number of hearts in the jar. Estimating isn't coming up with the exact answer, it is a good guess.  We use estimation all the time at school in situations such as "Will we have enough milk for everyone for snack?" or "Do we have enough napkins to set out for lunch?" .  

An Estimation Station was set up in each of the classrooms.
Each child was given an opportunity to estimate the number of hearts in the jar.  The children approached this challenge in different ways.  Some children stared at the jar, shook it, turned it upside down or busily counted as many hearts as they could see.









Each child wrote down their estimate.



All The Estimates

How many hearts were in the jar?




There were 86 hearts in the jar.  The majority of the children came within twenty of the actual number.  That is very good! The closest estimates were 90, 91 and 92. 


The Top Three Estimates

(l to r) 5 1/2 year old D., 5 year old I. and almost 6 year old S.

Well done everyone!

1 comment:

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