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.

3 comments:

Sue said...

Oh, that is great. I like how you reinforced by saying, "yes, you put the quarter in the 25 cent place"

Deanna said...

Somewhere I remember seeing a coin rubbing that looked like Mount Rushmore. Can't recall where but I saved the photo for us to make later.

Also- did you know they sell those coin collector books at hobby lobby!? I had been buying them off ebay and stumbled into them there.

Having Fun at Home said...

Deanna, the coin rubbing like Mount Rushmore sounds interesting. I'd like to see that photo too. :-)