Kindergarten classrooms emphasize national symbols by introducing coins and bills to the students. The teacher will bring in a selection of coins to examine at an observation table with magnifying glasses and a scale for the students to explore. After all kids have had a turn at the observation table, the teacher makes a chart on the board to identify the coins and the national symbols on them. The teacher places a coin on the document camera to be shown on the projection screen. As a class, the symbols are identified and a tally is kept of how many of each symbol are presented on the coins. The students are sent home with a copy of the tally sheet. As homework, they add 10 more coins and their symbols to the tally sheet.
The teacher gives all of the students play coins, prior to reading a teacher-generated story. In the story, a six-year old is on a trip with his parents to a place where he could spend money in many different places, like the fair or the mall. The story prompts the child to stop and spend different coins at each stop. Ask the classroom students to hold up the correct coin each time they hear a prompt for a type of coin.
The teacher makes a math center with three different colored bags of coins. Real coins are always better than fake coins. They have the right weight, smell, and texture. The students, in groups of three, visit the center to count the coins in each bag, being careful not to mix the contents of each bag. After counting the money, they place the bags in order from least amount of value to greatest amount of value. At the end of the center activity, the teacher tells the students the correct color order.
This activity works best in an upper elementary classroom with a projector. The teacher places under the document camera an item to 'buy' from her prize box, lost and found box or private stash of trinkets. She puts a price on the item. The teacher pulls a bill out of her "wallet." If she needs more money to cover the cost of the item, she pulls another bill out of the wallet. When she has enough money to pay for the item, she places the bills under the document camera. The students are to show the amount of change to be returned to the teacher, and they lay out the change for the transaction using a stash of play money provided to them. The teacher makes a quick thumbs-up, or thumbs-down assessment of the students' work.