I downloaded this worksheet a few years ago from the Read.Write.Think. website (www.readwritethink.org). This activity is best for first grade and up. I tried it with few kindergarten students, who did surprisingly well, but as a whole I would stick with first grade and above. This activity teaches new math vocabulary (estimate, more than, less than, most, least, compare, graph, etc) as well as reinforces following directions. I of course tied speech in here as well! One of my students that has the "th" sound as a goal, had to use the correct sound in the words "three, " "thirteen," and in the sentence, "I think my bag has _____ M&M's inside."
Each student was given a bag of M&M's or Skittles, a pencil, and a worksheet. I'm sure you cannot read this worksheet from the photo. The first sections says My Estimate _____. None of my students knew the word estimate, so I let them use their detective skills and try to figure out the meaning from my clue, "I want you to estimate how many M&M's are in your bag. You cannot open the bag or touch the bag." The next section says The Amount ______. This is where they open the bag and count their candy. From there, the students had to decide if their estimate was more than, less than, or equal to the actual amount in the bag.
Counting and sorting candy!
Next, the kids sort their candy into color groups and graph their results! At the bottom of the page, the students fill out which color had the most and which color had the lease amount in the bag. The last step (and most important!) is to eat their candy!
Graphing our results.
Completed graph!
"Check out our graphs!"
Our bulletin board outside the speech room: "This week we learned to estimate!"
