As life skills go, learning how to identify and count money is a pretty important thing for children to master. All that practice counting by 5’s and 10’s finally comes in handy when they start to count their coins.
My seven-year-old son has been having a hard time remembering the four most commonly used coins — pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters — and their values, so I developed a simple game to help him. I want to share that game with you today.
Using front and back images of a quarter, dime, nickel, and penny, I blew them up to a large size (about 4” diameter) that would allow him to see each coin in detail.
Then, I made plain circles with the coin value on one side, and its name on the opposite side. Being the multi-tasking homeschool mom that I am, I added a couple of handwriting lines on each side, to give him practice tracing and writing the coin names and values, as well. By cutting out the circles, placing the matches back-to-back, and laminating them, I created a durable game that can be reused. (Writing the coin names and values with a washable marker allows them to simply be wiped off.)
Once the pieces for game were ready, we took a grand pile of real coins — pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters. First, he’s working on sorting them by sight, matching the visual appearance of the front or back of a coin to the game pieces.
Once he has that down, we move on to sorting the coins by value and by their name.
Now, whenever we are working on a math worksheet that focuses on adding money, I pull out these laminated pieces if he’s struggling to remember the coins. He sets up the game himself, then references the images and values to do his math. Simple but effective … and he thinks it’s fun! Can’t do better than that!
Download a FREE printable copy of this game to use at home:
Coin Sorting Game (Free Printable)
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