Rounding Numbers to the Nearest Ten with Craft Sticks

Several bloggers have gotten together to share more ideas for using your craft supplies to learn. We worked on rounding numbers to the nearest ten with craft sticks and it’s been a favorite activity for the last week, so I know that your kids will love it too!

Materials needed for Rounding Numbers to the Nearest Ten with Craft Sticks:

100 Craft sticks

11 Small containers

1 Piece of card stock to create the labels

Circle punch

Tape

Marker

How to prepare the activity:

Write the numbers 1-100 on the ends of the craft sticks.

Cut out 11 circles from the card stock, write the numbers from 0-100 counting by 10s on the circles. Tape the circles onto the 11 containers.

Practice Rounding Numbers to the Nearest Ten with the Craft Sticks:

This was actually my first time explaining how to round numbers to the nearest ten to my 1st grader.

We decided that four-year-olds (aka….little sister) were little, so 4’s got rounded down. And that five-year-olds really want to be big, so 5’s and above get rounded up.

That explanation seemed to make sense to her because she didn’t have any troubles figuring out which containers to put the sticks into.

I did not have her do all 100 sticks. Instead she picked out 20 sticks and sorted them. The next day she picked another 20 and so on. This made it a manageable amount for her to work with.

If you are using this as a review activity, like I did with my 6th grader, you can definitely have them do all 100 sticks. She did that in about 5 minutes. While the activity was way below her skill level, it’s always good to review even small concepts, to make sure that they aren’t being left behind while the kids are studying more difficult things (like dividing huge decimals…)

We stored our rounding numbers activity including the small containers in a quart-size zip top baggie and it fit perfectly.