Estimation Station - The Details

We have been using Estimation180.com every day for the entire school year.  We are getting good at it.  We wanted to see how the rest of the school might be. 

We planned it for about a week and a half of math classes - not all period, we did lots of math as well.  Our agenda one day looked like this:

• Estimation180  Check these out here.
• Solve Me Puzzles (3) Check them out here.
• Which One Doesn't Belong? Why? (2) Check it out here.  
• Visual Patterns (1)  And, these can be found here. 
• Make signs for our 3 stations
• Make advertisement signs and hang them around the school
• Count the yellow and purple skittles
• Factor when A is not 1

Students were skeptical we would get it all done in one period, but we did.

Each day we prepared a little more:
Day 1: The 3 ideas - brainstorm the stations and the necessary materials
Day 2: Meet with our film and TV teacher to discuss our plan for videotaping (Thanks Mr. Haas!)
Day 3:  Field trip down two floors to the science room to borrow goggles and aprons (Thanks Mr. King!)
Day 4: Make the signs and count the Skittles (Thanks to cafeteria ladies for giving us non-latex gloves!)
Day 5: Pour the soda (this was the plan but we didn't have enough cups so we had to wait until the day of.

The day before the actual Estimation Station project, I reminded the students to be in school.  It is a small class, only 10 kids, 8 come regularly but attendance is an issue.  One student said she had a field trip, one had an interview and then realized that was on a different day.  Another said he didn't really want to do it, but later changed his mind.  For a group who seemed excited for it, they were ready to bail on me.  I reminded them of all our time planning it and told them the money I had put into it.  They didn't realize the behind the scenes stuff.  They asked "How much did it cost?":

How much do you think the teacher spent?
3 bags of Skittles ($7.50 but only used 2 bags)
1 jar for Skittles ($1.00)
2 yellow tableclothes ($2.00)
2 Two Liters of Coke ($3.00)
Pack of 50 plastic cups ($2.50)
1 Watermelon ($7.99)
2 - 350 pack of rubberbands ($15.00)  This I had to research, watched some videos, learned the different sizes - ordered 3 inch Size 64 rubberbands from Amazon.

Grand Total: $38.99

Other materials:
Table, bowl for the watermelon (next time, bucket would be better, we ended up putting bowl on a chair, little tippy), pens, paper to write guesses on, goggles, aprons, bags to hold guesses, funnel to pour soda back into bottle, mini white boards to hold tablecloth down and provide surface to write guesses on.

Process for Watermelon:
2 kids put on 75 then took a break
2 new kids started adding bands until it broke
Surprisingly, no rubber bands actually broke on them
The actual explosion happened in a blink of an eye.
It was so exciting and cool to watch.
A big ball of rubberbands ended up about 8 feet away.

Coming Soon....The video.....Stay Tuned.
All answers will be announced in the video.