Teaching students about money is hard in kindergarten. It’s an abstract concept that doesn’t have any real-world meaning to them yet. They know that you need money to buy things, but we don’t handle coins and bills much anymore. So exposing them to the worth of each coin and bill can be a bit more difficult unless they have had some experiences with it before. Here is how we tackled learning about coins in our kindergarten classroom:
Poem This 5 Little Donuts in the Bakery Shop poem was a hit! They loved picking their friends to come up and buy a donut each time we sang the song, and every time they picked a coin they had to tell us its value. I printed off large pictures of coins, and printed the name of the coin on the back of it before laminating so that students can easily make the connection between the name of the coins and what they look like.
Coin Rubbing Work Sheets Students loved working on these sheets and it gave them the opportunity to explore the different coins in a new way. They had to look at the coins and find their characteristics while still doing a fun activity. You can get a copy of these worksheets here.
Loose Parts We added coins to our loose part center to allow students to freely explore each of the coins, and to make connections to their values: “You need 25 pennies to equal 1 quarter.”
Anchor Chart We had a discussion about money and passed out coins to each of the students so they would have a chance to touch each one of them and look at them. Then we worked together to make an anchor chart about money and what we knew about it. Getting them to talk about the different coins makes it a more meaningful learning experience and gives them the opportunity to share what they know with their classmates.
Open a Store Students picked items from our classroom and put price tags on them. Then they placed them on the shelf in their store and worked on them other elements that you need in a store (like a cash register, signs, the name). This is still a work in progress, and I hope to have some great pictures of their work in the coming week (follow me on Instagram for the pics) and share any other fun things they add to their store!
Do you have any favourite money activities? How do you incorporate hands-on learning with your class?
