Great Estimations

by Bruce Goldstone

How many jelly beans are on this book's cover? Don't count―estimate!

If someone handed you a big bowl of jelly beans, how would you figure out how many there are? You could count them, one by one―or you could estimate. Do you see more than five jelly beans? Less than a million?

This unique book will show you how to train your eyes and your mind to make really great estimations―by making estimating into a game. Jelly beans are just the beginning! This title has Common Core connections.

Great Estimations is a 2007 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

Genres: Mathematics, Picture Books, Nonfiction, Childrens

32 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Bruce Goldstone is the author of several books, including 100 Ways to Celebrate 100 Days, Great Estimations, Greater Estimations and The Beastly Feast. He has worked in educational publishing for nearly twenty years. Growing up in Ohio, Bruce fell in love with reading and the magic of words, and even back then he knew he wanted to be a writer. Books have always been an important part of his life, from buying used paperbacks to his first job, shelving books as a library page. He now lives in New York City with a plethora of pets including one dog, three parakeets, and an aquarium.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/bruceg...

Reviews

[Tatiana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I came upon Great Estimations through my Math Methods course as a possibile selection for a children's book-based lesson, but alas the concept didn't align with fifth grade standards. This was a fantastic find nevertheless.

The photograph illustrations make the book. Kids understand math when it is presented in real world situations. They can understand making a guess about how many jelly beans are in a jar; they don't even realize they're estimating. Amidst the colorful photos, author Goldstone teaches strategies for making accurate estimations. The key, I deduced, was training your eye and your mind to group items by 'simple' numbers, like 10 or 25, as well as grasping the size/quantity of items (what does 500 Cheerios look like?).

[Stephanie Watson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a great resource for teaching kids some concrete ways to improve in estimation skills. However, I prefer Bruce Goldstone's 2nd book on this topic, "Greater Estimations". I feel like that one is a little more fun, has greater variety, and gives more opportunity to practice different types of estimation skills. Plus, the epilogue at the end beats the pants off this one. The two books could be used in tandem; also, I would say this first one is geared toward a bit younger crowd and Greater Estimations for slightly older kids. Both are great for elementary school though.

[Rayjan Koehler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely worth reading for kids learning their estimations.

[Jessica Warner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great for my classroom!

[Kylie Cooper · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book covers the topic of estimating in math and can cover the KY standard and have the student have an understanding of estimating.

[Scott Roark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Uses every day items and shows how children can group and then count by the number of groups given an estimated total. The book is well categoried so students of different ability levels can learn something new. Shows how students can round things to 10, 100, 1000 places. Let say there is a group of 100, the book circles a group of ten, then shows you how to estimate grouping additional intervals of that number. For an extension, teacher can take items in the classroom such as unifix cubes or manipulatives and place them on the desk. Students could then practice estimating with a hands-on approach. Students and teacher could also take pictues of items they see outside the classroom and bring them in to be used on the Smartboard so that the class can estimate the number of items (ex. leaves on the ground, stars in the sky, freckles on someones face, the amount of candy from Halloween, etc.).

[Tracy Strahsburg · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an amazing book for teaching children about estimation! I find that this is a difficult topic to teach about other than loads of practice. This book teaches children about training their eyes to estimate (knowing what groups of 10 and 100 look like), how to clump count groups of objects, how to box count items, and how to make estimations of items in jars and containers. The books progresses from simpler estimation techniques to more difficult ones so I could see introducing each topic, one at a time, and practicing using that topic before reading the next section. Another aspect of this book that makes is so great for the classroom is the rich math vocabulary that the author used. They did not talk down to the reader as they didn’t know what estimation was, but spoke to the reader with great math vocabulary which often makes young children feel even more proud of their newfound knowledge!

[Karan Johnstone · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another great book about estimating. It explains how to train your eye to look at groups of tens, hundreds and thousands then estimate from there. It also explains clump counting and how to make clumps of 10 objects in a clump then figure out how many objects that way. Box and count is explained, too. It tells you to break the picture into 100 boxes then count the objects in one of those boxes and multiply by 100. It has high interest pictures that will keep the students engaged.
I could use this book in small groups that are having a difficult time in estimating. We could go through each picture and do exactly what the book tells us to do in order to estimate the objects.

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I use this every year in my introduction to estimation. There is little else my students stubbornly refuse to do than estimate. I think this is because we never give them truly enormous quantities to physically estimate, so they never see why estimating can be valuable. I like using this with Andrew Clement's A Million Dots.

[Chanae Wills · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Great Estimations” discusses the topic of estimation. It has everyday items that children are familiar with such as jelly beans, people, and rabbits. The book also gives strategies on how to estimate large numbers of objects. The pictures in the book are photographs of real objects which, I think, makes it more relatable to the students.

[Wilson Goss · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great non fiction math children's book. It's all about estimating! Fun and colorful pictures accompany numerous different estimation strategies. Hints are provided along the way to encourage even the most hesitant estimators. The estimations start easy and become more and more challenging. Even as an adult I learned some good estimating strategies I hadn't thought of!

[Debrarian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Totally cool book about training the eye to estimate numbers. It‘s one of those skills I don‘t remember specifically learning, just acquiring somehow; this book really shows how it‘s done with fun photo illustrations.

[DixieJo · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great math picture book! Noble, my fact lovin' kiddo, is going to eat this book up. It trains your eye to read and estimate. Great introduction to estimates, as well as follow up fun for those of us that know how to already.

[The Library Lady · Rating 4 out of 5]

If all math books were this beautifully photographed and so much fun to read, my 13 year old would have aced math for the past 7 years. Oh, well.....

[Vandy]

math - quantifying numbers..10 100 1000.....
estimating jelly beans

[Karissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Great to link literacy and math (estimation). This would be a better book for the higher grades.

[Miri Gifford · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kind of 90s-looking photography, but still a good book for teaching kids how to estimate.

[Deborah · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great story to read and discuss in Math class.

[Betsy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great math book that teaches how to eyeball a group of things to make accurate estimations. It shows different comparisons to teach what 10 or 100 or 1000 things look like. Grades 2nd to 5th.

[Milo Lamar · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think getting close to the answer is sometimes better than getting the exact answer if it takes sufficiently less time. I hope my son learns something from this book.

[Briana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Important book to teach some of the underlying "what does 100 or 1000 look like" skills. Very cool, easy to follow, and taught me some things as an adult.