Kick the Morning Off with Math!

If you’ve been following along with my Homeschool Pre-school posts, then you have probably heard me mention our Morning Time. In order to keep everyone (including mama) on track, I created a Free Morning Time Printable: a schedule of sorts – and each day begins with these daily practice activities and then we get started with any worksheets/experiences that have been planned for the day.

Psst…stick around: Later in this post, I have a link where you can grab your own copy for free!

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In this post, I want to share a little bit about the “Add a Coin”/”Coin Recognition” part of our Morning Time!

Want to join us? All you need is:

a Hundreds Board

Pennies, Nickels, Dimes, and Quarters*

a Small Sorting Container for All of Your Coins

a Separate Small Plastic Container for Daily Storage

*Fake coins or real coins will do, but we love to use the real thing! We took a trip to the local bank to gather several rolls of various types of coins – This gives my kiddos a chance to interact with real money…something that doesn’t happen very often in our mostly cashless society.

On the first day of school (You could begin on any day!), we start counting!

We simply add 1¢ for each day of school – slowly but surely working our way to 100!

Each day, we lay our coins out on the hundreds board, but when we are finished counting coins/adding coins, we store our coins in a small container until the next day when we get them back out for this activity.

Week #1

Monday – add a penny

Tuesday – add a penny

Wednesday – add a penny

Thursday – add a penny

Friday – add a penny AND THEN show how all five pennies can be traded in for a nickel

Week #2

Monday – add a penny

Tuesday – add a penny

Wednesday – add a penny

Thursday – add a penny

Friday – add a penny AND THEN show how all five pennies from this week can be traded in for a nickel AND THEN show how both nickels can be traded in for a dime

Continue to do this adding and trading of coins all the way to one hundred! Your kids will especially love trading 2 dimes and a nickel in for 1 quarter! (Hey, you can even work in fifty-cent pieces if you want!)

Here we are on day 93!

Want to extend this daily lesson even further? Discuss “How many more days til 100?” “How much more money do we need to get to $1.00?” These questions will begin laying the foundation for teaching your kiddos to count back change – a skill that is seemingly becoming a lost art!

The goal is to eventually have four quarters (or two fifty-cent pieces) to trade in for a one dollar bill!

When we make it to one hundred, we trade our coins in for $1, and then we head to the dollar store where each kiddo gets to spend their hard-earned money! (Mama is happy to cover the tax.) 😉

As we are adding coins, we discuss the name of each coin as well as its value. This cheesy song from a YouTube video caught on quickly in our house:

We don’t sing the entire thing, but we do sing this part:

A penny is one.

A nickel is five.

A dime is ten.

A quarter’s twenty-five.

Interested in another great FREE resource? I love the way The Reading Mama has incorporated money in to her numbers charts! I have printed these (They’re adorable!), and am getting ready to laminate them as we speak!

Her Coin Puzzles have also been a great resource for us!

In addition to working with the actual coins, I also have some larger laminated coins that I like to use! They make it easy to talk about the faces that can be found on the U.S. coins. This set could provide a similar experience!

Penny – Abraham Lincoln

Nickel – Thomas Jefferson

Dime – Franklin D. Roosevelt

Quarter – George Washington

Interested in a 3-D magnetic set?

Buy Money Magnetic Bills & Coins Set Here

WANT TO ACCESS YOUR FREE MORNING TIME PRINTABLE?

Psst…for extra durability, print on colorful cardstock and laminate! Don’t have a laminator? Of the many that I have owned over the years, this one has been my favorite, AND it’s been the cheapest!