Estimation ~ Guesstamation

I loved estimation in school.   This is something you use your entire life.   I always called it guess-ta-mation for fun.    Estimation is very crucial to learn.   If you don't you have to learn the hard and embarrassing way at the cash register in the grocery store because you bought too much and don't have enough money.    There are some key skills you need to know for estimation.

Now in order for students to catch onto estimation, the must fully understand place value.  If they don't  they will struggle to figure out what number to look at in order to find the estimated number.

First students will need to learn rounding. http://www.aaamath.com/est27ax2.htm. Here is an explanation, then if you scroll down there is a practice area.   You now will work through the place values of tens, hundreds and thousand.   Rounding decimals is next.See video here.

There is also front end rounding  shown here:click on "watch out"
http://studyjams.scholastic.com/studyjams/jams/math/addition-subtraction/estimate-sums-diffs.html
 There is also steps for estimating the difference and such.  Estimation also includes time.   Students need to learn how to tell time to the nearest hour, half hour and quarter hour.

Estimation is something we all use on a daily basis.   I think coming up with real life situations for this unit will be easy and you can make it fun too.    You could have students plan some kind of party where they have to estimate how many students there are then estimate how much each person would eat and drink.  Then for all their hard work and planning, you could cook or bring in that actual amount of their estimation to see if they are right.