Monday Math Literature Volume 24

Missed the last post?  Check it out here!

If you are a regular reader of my blog,  you know how important I feel estimating and counting routines are in the K-6 classrooms.  The books I will be featuring today are must reads in K-6 classrooms.

Great Estimations

 

This is a GREAT book!  I use this book with students in grades K-4.  It does a great job explaining how thinking about tens, hundreds and thousands can help with estimating.  It starts off by showing a lot of different types of items in groups of 10 and then moves to 100 and 1000.  Then it gives students a referent of a group of 10 and/or a group of 100 next to a random group and has them estimate how many are in the random group based on what they already know.  The end of the book gets into more sophisticated estimation strategies like box and count, clump counting and counting a fraction of the total amount and multiplying.  Using this book with kids has helped many of them make connections they previously lacked and I myself find I am now better at estimating. 

Greater Estimations

After being a fan of Great Estimations, I was excited when I saw a similar title available and it hasn't let me down.  This book is laid out in a similar format to the original but goes into larger numbers like showing what 10,000 looks like.  I still use this book with young children because they LOVE seeing what big numbers really are.  I have used this book from grades K-6 with great success.  This book also gets into bigger questions like how many hairs on a cat or how many blades of grass on a football field.  If you have ever wondered how people make really big estimates, this is a great book even for adults to learn a few new things from!

These are currently the only 2 books around estimation in my collection.  Know any others I should be checking out?  Please leave your recommendations in the comments below.

Head over to volume 25 to learn more about some great literature connections to use when teaching odd and even numbers.