Estimation Station

After our last crafting activity my son said to me, "Mom, why do we keep having to do this stuff that we don't want to do?" Well, what does one say to that, I'd like to know. So I thought for a minute and said, "Ok, no more crafts. Let's do some math, shall we?" Now, truth be told, I had everything all set to make these crayon heart crafty thingees, but obviously, it was time to switch it up a bit. I cast my eyes around for something math-ish and came upon a jar filled with conversation hearts that I had left out for snacking on after we had done our candy graphing a few days earlier. It was just the thing I needed--come to rescue us from the crafting-doldrums.

This is the jar that I grabbed and set down between us--

and led out with: "So, how many conversation heart candies do you think are in this jar? How many would you guess? What is your estimate?"

To which my oldest said: "I think there are 100." 

"Fat chance." I thought to myself.

"20!" said my younger son.

"Hmmm...probably a few more..." I thought to myself.

"I'm going to estimate that there are 50 candy hearts in this jar." I said proudly.

We then poured the candy hearts out onto the carpet and commenced counting. I figured this would be an excellent opportunity to practice counting over 20. And indeed we did count over 20. And over 30. and over 50. We counted all the way to 99! When we got there my oldest son yelled out an exultant, "YES! I won, I won, I WON! I'm smarter than Mama!" And indeed he was. Can you believe there were 99 little candies in that jar? It doesn't seem possible to me, but there you have it.  Count them and weep.

After our bout with the conversation hearts we went on a hunt all over the house to find other things to estimate and count and see who won. Let me just say that I never, actually won, pathetic as it is to admit. But those little buggers had quite the case of beginner's luck...er...something.

Estimating is fun! That's what we learned. Apparently, it is WAY funner than crafts. Depending on who you ask. Nevertheless, I think I will have to abandon crafts for a few more days.