Estimation

Alexkerhead

An activity that teaches a child about estimation.

 Materials Needed:

• Building blocks.
• Large jug of water.
• Measuring cups.
• Egg timer.
• Marbles in a container.

What to do:

• Place the items onto the table in front of the child.
• Tell them they are going to learn “estimation”. This means coming up with a guess based on the following questions:

- How many blocks can you build to make a tower before they fall over?

- How many cups of water would you need to fill up the jug?

- How many marbles would you need to fill up a measuring cup?

- How many times do we have to turn the egg timer before you pack away the blocks?

- Will the marbles sink or float in the water?

• Go through the questions with the child.
• Ask them to think about their answer and write it down.
• Once they have answered all the questions, use the items on the table to work out the correct solution.
• See how close the child’s estimations were

Hints and Tips:

• As a group activity, you could make a chart with the above questions and write down each child's estimations. Add the results at the end to see who had the most correct estimations.
• You could use other questions than those listed above.
• Find more items that the child could use to estimate. For example: roll dice to find out how many times a number “4” would be rolled in 10 attempts.