MathStart 2: Coyotes All Around (Rounding)

It's another fine desert day for the counting coyotes: Clumsy, Clever, Cool, Careful and Little One. Clumsy thinks there must be hundreds of roadrunner birds, but Clever thinks that's a little high and encourages the other four coyotes to take a count. When it comes time to add up the totals, Clever says she can do in it her head by using rounding. Instead of adding 21+12+17+8, Clever rounds the numbers and adds 20+10+20+10, estimating the total will be 60. The actual total is 58, so she's pretty close. The coyotes then try counting lizards and grasshoppers. Clever's fast estimating amazes her friends. The story is also filled with lots of coyote factoids. Rounding and then computing are necessary skills for making sound estimates. Used with permission from Stuart J. Murphy.