The Impossible Guessing Jar

Georgia O’Keeffe

The kids at GOK had a guessing jar challenge. We had jars of different objects that the students guessed what was in each one. The largest number was the orbes.

We had guesses from 200 to 200,000.  At the end of the game, the kids asked how many orbes were in the jar. My answer? Let’s figure it out!

I had three brave volunteers to count orbes. They had a great system – count by tens and tally the tens on a piece of paper.

 

Then count all of the tallies.The end of the day we had 1456 orbes with all of us counting – however, we were only about an eighth down from the jar.

 

The next day, we had a hard time motivating each other to count the rest of the orbes.

 

 

We counted the rest by estimating.

 

We filled the counted orbes into a smaller jar.

 

Then we estimated that every time we fill the jar we would get 1456 orbes.

 

We filled the jar 7 times – equaling about 10,192 orbes!

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the end, we had an orbes celebration!