Teaching About Money

Teaching about money is a great way to end the year as the concepts lend itself to active investigations, playing money games, and counting coins and making change.


#1 Attributes - First, have students examine the coins. Actual coins or coin manipulatives help students determine each coin's attributes, name, and monetary value. Give students sorting mats for each coin and coin manipulatives to sort onto the mats. 

Conduct a quick assessment  or exit pass to ensure understanding of coin identification. Say things such as, "Give a quarter to your partner!" or "Grab 2 quarters!".

#2 Skip Counting with Like Coins -  Before being able to count assorted coins, have students learn to skip count through a series of one coin. Use coin manipulatives to have students practice counting pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters by 1s, 5s, 10s, and 25s.  Provide a handful of pennies and have them count as a group 1, 2, 3, 4.. etc. as they push each coin out of their pile. Repeat with nickels and count 5, 10, 15, 20, etc.  -pushing a nickel out of their pile into its own pile as they say each number. Repeat with dimes and counting by 10. Finally, repeat with quarters. This can be difficult for some students, so you may not want to provide more than 4 quarters at first. Learning about quarters is important as it provides meaningful connections to fourths in fractions and quarter to and quarter after in time.

#3 Adding With Like Coins - Have students combine coins to be equivalent to another coin. For example: 

• 5 pennies = nickel
• 2 nickels = dime 
• 2 dimes and 1 nickel = quarter 
• 4 quarters = dollar

In Money Roll, money dice is combined with number dice for a fun game. Students roll the dice. They take the rolled amount on the number die of the coin rolled on the money die. They count the money. Coin manipulatives and stamps can be used to help students total the amount.

#4 Adding Money - Have students practice adding with money. I recommend A LOT of practice with adding like coins (only adding pennies) before having students add mixed coins. There are many games to help students practice adding mixed coins. 

Money Jars is a fun game to help practice adding money. Distribute coins and Money Jars. Have students fill each jar with the amount of money listed on the lid. Challenge students to use the least amount of coins for each amount.

#5 Making Change - Practice making change. Establish a store and have students purchase items with coin and bill manipulatives.

I hope that this post helps provide fun and engaging ways to teach money! If you want these activities, EVERYTHING you saw in this post PLUS more - grab my Money Unit!

Easter Scavenger Hunt for Staff

Celebrate Easter in the workplace with a simple, yet fun-filled office scavenger hunt.

This scavenger hunt is aimed to help the staff get to know each other, their achievements, and to have fun.  The staff members work in pairs to complete four tasks.

1. The first task to find plastic eggs filled with treats! 
2. The second and third tasks are questions about the staff, The questions range from "What is the height of the tallest staff member?" and "What staff members play competitive sports?".
3. The final task is the completion of a "bunny" phrased activity. The task can be videotaped to show at staff meetings. An example is "Demonstrate the bunny hop".

Completion of the tasks are awarded with a chocolate bunny!

Respond if you would like a copy of the scavenger hunt!