Intro to Money

Rowin has a piggy bank full of change (not exactly sure where it all came from?!) but he's been very into "his money" lately, which has opened up lots of little teaching moments for this teaching-deprived mommy. :) 

It started with him using his money to buy a couple of toys and books from garage sales. He was very excited to hand over his precious coins in return for his new treasures. Since he was so interested in money and the whole concept of buying things, we set up a store when we got home. 

I labeled several items with price tags (ten cents and under). Here's what some of our "store" looked like.

Rowin picked out the items in the store that he wanted to buy and then counted out the correct amount of change to buy that item. We only used pennies. Children learn how to count by 5's and 10's in kindergarten, making counting nickels and dimes easier. Counting mixed coins is tricky even in second grade. My son is three, so we stuck with using pennies and counting by ones. 

This is such a simple activity, but reinforces SO many skills and concepts. To name a few...

• Number identification-your child has to recognize the number on the price tag
• Counting and 1-1 Correspondence-your child has to count the pennies, one by one, up to the given number
• Greater Than/Less Than-If your child has 5 cents but wants to buy an item that costs 6 cents, he has to determine if 6 is greater than 5 or less than 5 to know if he can buy it.
• A couple of times, Rowin wanted to buy another item, but could tell by looking at his coins that he didn't have enough money to buy it. Life Lesson=If you don't have the money, you don't buy it!
• You can switch roles so that you buy items and give your money to your child. This allows you to model how you think mathematically. You can say things like, "Hmm, I want to buy the magnifying glass but I only have four cents so I don't have enough money." Or "Let's see, I have ten cents. I could buy the ball and the race car OR I could buy the book."
• Social skills-Practice what you would say if you were buying something. "I'd like to buy that book please." "Here's ten cents." "Thank you!"

If your child knows or is learning how to count by tens or fives, you could do this same activity with dimes or nickels and price your items accordingly. I would recommend using one coin at a time until your child can consistently count the coins correctly before introducing a new coin. For example, 

• Pennies only
• Dimes only
• Nickels only
• Dimes + Pennies
• Nickels + Pennies
• Dimes + Nickels
• Dimes + Nickels + Pennies
• Quarters, etc. 

Whether you have a ten year old or a three year old, this is a great life skill to practice with your child-at your pretend store at home, at the Dollar Store, or the grocery store. You can easily adapt this, based on the age of your child. Happy shopping!