Play a matching game to help students pair up coins with their values. For first graders who are still learning the value of individual coins, create pairs of cards with single coins. Place a picture of the coin on one card, and write the value of the card on its corresponding coin. Have the kids pair up the cards to practice the values. For students learning to count multiple coins together, place pictures of several coins on a card and write the total value of the coins on the other card. For example, if you had two quarters, a dime, two nickels and three pennies on the picture card, you would write ".73" on the matching card to represent the total.
Daily practice of counting coins keeps the information fresh. To integrate money into morning calendar activities, track the school days with coins. On the first day of school, you would place one penny on the chart. Each day, add another penny until you have enough to trade in for a nickel. Continue trading in for nickels, dimes and quarters when you reach enough days. Another option is to display a grouping of coins on the overhead or chalkboard. Have the kids count the money in the picture to get the total. Count the money together as a class to check the students' answers.
A hundreds chart provides a counting tool for kids learning to total up the value of several coins. Have students place each coin on the chart to represent its value. Tell them to always start with the largest coins and work down to the smallest value coins. If the coins included were a quarter, two dimes, a nickel and three pennies, the quarter would go first. In this example, the students would place the quarter on the 25 square on the grid. Since the dimes are worth 10 cents, the first dime would go on the 35 square since it adds 10 cents to the total. The second dime goes on the 45 square. The nickel would go on the 50 square and the three pennies go on the 51, 52 and 53 squares. This tells the child that the coins are worth 53 cents.
This activity gets the kids out of their seats to find the other students with matching amounts of money. Each student needs a plastic bag with several coins inside. Each bag should have a matching bag with another student containing the exact same value, but with a different combination of coins. For example, one bag might have a quarter, a dime, five nickels and two pennies for a total of 62 cents. The matching bag worth 62 cents might have two quarters, a dime and two pennies. Once the partners find one another, they can compare the coins in the bags. A chart to break down the count for each type of coin helps them document the differences. You can repeat this activity multiple times by collecting the bags and passing them back out to different students.