Money and Time.. It's Another Math Tip Monday!

It's time for another Math Tip Monday link up! This post is all about Money and Time.

It seems like it gets harder to teach money every year. The students have less and less experience each year with money since they don't see it at home; their parents are using cards instead. I get it - I rarely keep cash on me and use cards most of the time. Gotta get those reward points! 

We start by creating anchor charts about coins. This can be a little tedious, so I start with the penny the first day. I introduce nickels the 2nd day, and we end up practicing with these coins for about a week or so before I introduce any new coins. Eventually I do the same thing for a dime and a quarter once I feel the students have a good foundation working with pennies and nickels. 

We do a daily coin counter and I usually will add 1 penny every day for 5 days, and guide the students through questioning to notice that we can trade in 5 pennies for a nickel.

This is really important because it lays the foundation for a game that we get to called "Collect 25 Cents". I introduce this game whole group to determine which coin (or coins) to add to the coin counter. 

Materials Needed:

Dice

A variety of real or fake coins

Rules: 

1. Player 1 rolls the dice. Let's say they roll a 3. They need to take 3 pennies (3 cents). 

2. Player 1 passes the dice to player 2. (This is REALLY important so the kiddos are paying attention to the coins the other player takes to check for accuracy. If you don't emphasize this step you end up with 2 students just rolling the dice and taking coins who have no idea what its going on.)

3. Player 2 rolls the dice. Let's say they roll a 4. They need to take 4 pennies (4 cents). 

4. Repeat step 2. 

5. Player 1 rolls the dice. Let's say they roll a 3 again. Again, they take 3 pennies and add the total. 3+3 = 6 cents. 

BUT WAIT!

You want to have as few coins as possible, so player 1 will need to trade 5 pennies in for a nickel. After the trade is made, player 1 passes the dice to player 2. (See why this is important?)

6. Repeat until one player has collected 25 cents. 

The great thing about this game is that it can be upped to collect 50 cents or collect $1.00 once students are ready to start working with larger numbers. If you are collecting more than 25 cents, you will want to use 2 dice. 

Helpful tips:

1. Make sure the students pass the dice to the next player to signal their turn. This helps when students need to trade pennies and nickels for larger coins. 

2. Have the students take the coins they need BEFORE they make any trades. 

Time is another thing that gets harder and harder to teach each year. Many families don't have analog clocks at home and prefer digital clocks instead. Sometimes the first time a child has even seen an analog clock is in school! This is something that can be difficult to practice at home because the kiddos don't have analog clocks. 

In order to get the kiddos proficient with time and money, I break it down into smaller routines to do each day. The routines are short, and last maybe 10 minutes each day. 

We start REALLY simple at the beginning of the year with telling time to the hour and half hour. This is done whole group verbally, but eventually transitions into using mini clocks and writing in journals. 

As the year goes on, we move to time to the quarter hour, 10 minute intervals, and eventually 5 minute intervals. I really stress vocabulary here such as quarter to, quarter past, half past, etc. I think the key here is that every student does everything, and increasing the number of turns. Add lots of practice into these quick 10 minute routines so that students can reach mastery. 

A big shout out to Theresa's Teaching Tidbits and K's Classroom Kreations for putting this all together!

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