Too often, says math educator John A. Van de Walle, children are expected to be able to count coins without preparation. Skip-counting activities based on fives, tens and 100 can help provide the understanding and speed to count money quickly. Van de Walle suggests an activity called "Money Counts" based on switching from one unit of skip counting to another. A teacher starts the class counting by tens, reaches 30, then announces a change to units of five. Counting continues (35, 40, 45) until other unit changes occur, such as ones (46, 47, 48). A larger shift, such as hundreds (148, 248, 348), makes the game livelier for second- and third-graders. Once pupils are familiar with the unit changing, play money can be added to the game.
The U.S. Mint (see Resources) offers many online money games as well as the printable "Pennies, Nickels and Dimes ... Oh, My!" Students are ready for this game if they can count by fives and tens, understand the "cents" symbol and know the penny values of nickels, dimes and quarters.
Each pupil receives a set of value cards for penny, nickel, dime and quarter that are labeled as quantities of cents. The teacher holds up a coin, such as a nickel, and the pupils respond by holding up their five-cents cards. Then after pupils raise cards to respond to a coin of larger or smaller value that the teacher holds up, she asks pupils to compare its worth to the previous coin. After practicing the coin values many times, the pupils move on to illustrated coin worksheets.
TeacherVision (see Resources) offers a printable board game for children who have begun working with 100s, tens and ones. To play the game, they need to have a beginning understanding of decimal numbers, because squares on the board express values that way instead of using the cents symbol. The board is cleverly shaped like a dollar sign and involves making moves based on rolls of a number cube. As players land on a space, the banker gives them the amount of money designated. Players exchange coins for bills. The first person to accumulate five dollars is the winner.
TeacherVision (see Resources) provides a child-friendly handout for pupils to design their own game boards. First, a teacher should model the process by creating a game to share with the class. Then pupils can be assigned to work in pairs to make games. Commercial play money and coins or free online printables of play money will make the project more exciting. Pupils can share their completed games over a few days during math class.