Saturday, April 2, 2011

Introducing Coins

In an attempt to insert some new math skills into M's very verbally slanted preschool activities (I'm afraid I just love words soooo much more than numbers) today I introduced her to pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters.

First, we counted out the right number of pennies to represent each coin so she could get a visual impression for how much each is worth.
 
We talked about the names for each coin, and then I had her do some independent work matching the right coins to circles on a page (I had traced the coins and written their numbers on each circle).  That worked pretty well; she mostly paid attention to the sizes of the circles and not the numbers, but when I went back and checked her work with her, I had a chance to review the numbers.  (e.g. "You put the quarter on the number 25; that's right!")  

Of course the trickiest two are the pennies and dimes because they are so close in size.  To make it a little more obvious to her when she had gotten it right or gotten it wrong we made a little play dough puzzle.  I impressed the shape of each coin onto a flattened piece of play dough and imprinted each shape with the number of the coin.  That worked well and M enjoyed squishing the coins into the play dough.