Not all learning and academic work has to feel like ‘work’ or take place in a school environment
Engaging with your student academically and building math skills can happen just about anywhere and anytime!
In this article, I will discuss games and activities to play with your student to help build and reinforce rounding and estimating math skills.
Rounding and estimation within 100 is a 3rd grade and up skill based on CCSS standards. Ensure your student has these prerequisite and foundational skills before attempting these activities.
Estimate the Shopping/Grocery Bill
This is an activity my mother used to play with me as a child. This game will increase your student’s awareness of dollars and cents, as well as utilizing mental math adding and subtracting strategies. This game is also good for practicing budgeting using real world math experiences.
Children love to feel included and be given responsibilities relating to the home, group, and family. Include your student on your next shopping trip to the grocery store and ask them to keep track of how much money you will be spending today at the store. You could provide your student with a set/pre-determined shopping list and have them collect and write down rounded price amounts next to each of the items. If there is no set/pre-determined shopping list, your student can collect and write down prices of items as you shop. The object of the game is to have your student’s total bill estimation be as close to the actual final total bill.
For hints: encourage your student to round prices of items to the nearest dollar amount or nearest quarter . For example, an item that costs $1.05 can be rounded to $1. An item that costs $1.23 can be rounded to $1.25.
Incentive the game by including a small treat or prize for estimating an amount close to the final bill.
To add challenge, play this game without pencil and paper and challenge your student to keep track of the running bill mentally. You could also challenge your student to estimate the final total bill with or without tax.
After the activity:
It is important to ALWAYS debrief an activity after completion. Ask your student these 3 questions: “How did playing that game make you feel & why?” “What was the hardest part of the game?” “What was the easiest part of the game?”. Generate a conversation around the debrief to model for your student effective communication. These debrief conversations will provide you with insight on your student’s skills, strengths and weaknesses. These conversations will also allow your student to practice speaking about their experiences and communicating their needs.
This post will be updated with new games and tools to use as I learn and research more strategies.