Money, money, money…

Each year it gets harder and harder to teach the students to count coins! I blame it on technology {as much as I love it}! Parents don’t carry around cash and change as much as they used to. I haven’t quite perfected the craft of teaching counting coins, but I think exposure is the most important. Here is how I start teaching the dreaded “money”.

For starters I like to use this Money Attributes Activity {created by Fredia Shumway from Frogs in First}. I give each student a penny, nickel, dime, and quarter {I use play money, but if you have real money…go for it}. We talk about the different attributes of each coin. We do it together because they don’t quite know the names of the presidents or symbols on the back. There are individual sheets as well as a big teacher sheet for display.

The teacher’s version looks like this:

At least twice a week I end up with extra time after a math lesson, so we play “Dollar Dice” {aka “Trading Up”}. Here are the rules:

Now something I’ve learned the hard way is: don’t just give kids coins and dice! It creates a lot of chaos and quite the mess! Thanks to pinterest users and other teacher blogs, and maybe my own problem-solving skills, I’ve come up with a more organized way of doing it. Simple solutions…

I happened to buy mini-playdough for a fossil unit from the dollar tree and thought I should keep these containers for some reason. Well, I figured it out really quick when the money was spilling everywhere! I give each group 4 containers filled with the different coins. I’ve also seen it in those dish type things.

Give them a hundreds chart!

No matter how much we use money and count it, there’s always someone who doesn’t know what’s going on. I give each group a hundreds chart to place the money values on to help them count {example: say I have a quarter and a nickel. I’d put the quarter on the 25 and count 5 to place the nickel, making it 30 cents.}