Monday, July 11, 2011

Counting Money with Coin Caterpillars


My son just wrapped up a four-week math summer camp and loved it (he clearly has his father’s genes). One of the things his teacher mentioned that he should continue to work on was counting money. Imagine my glee when that very same day Miss Kindergarten shared an amazing activity and printable on counting coins on her blog. (Yes, I do believe in fate.) Her Coin Caterpillars idea was EXACTLY what we needed!

Rather than just hand my son some pocket change and her worksheet, I decided to make some caterpillar faces so we could create caterpillar problems to do now and later.

To make the caterpillar faces:
  1. I traced a quarter onto construction paper and an empty cardboard cracker box I pulled out of our recycle bin and cut them out. 
  2. I cut and bent a pipe cleaner in the shape of a “V” and hot glued it to the cardboard circle. 
  3. I added glue on top and put the construction paper circle over it, sandwiching the pipe cleaner in the middle. 
  4. Then I laid a pencil over the pipe cleaner and wrapped both ends around the pencil to make the squiggly antennae.
  5. All that was left to do was glue on some googly eyes and draw a smile.


To make his coin caterpillars, I asked him to pick several coins and line them up in a row with a caterpillar face at the beginning. Underneath he wrote the values of the coins and then used a 1-100 numbers grid to count forward (i.e. add the values together).

So cute. So fun. And such good practice. Thank you, Miss Kindergarten!


Find this idea and loads of other great math activities listed on love2learn2day's Math Monday blog hop here.

6 comments:

  1. Glad you were able to use my idea! and I love how you adapted it to fit your son's needs! I used it today with my class and they really enjoyed it :)

    Hadar
    Miss Kindergarten
    Target Treasures

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  2. This is such a great idea!
    Little Wonders' Days

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  3. Hi. I'm a new follower coming over from the I Can Teach Linkup. I have a 6yr old and I absolutely love this idea. Can't wait to try it with him. I am excited to read more of your blog!

    Hope you'll stop by my blog some time.

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  4. How fun! I like this idea a lot! A fun way to intro money! :)

    Come link up to this week's Sunday Showcase - http://momto2poshlildivas.blogspot.com/2011/07/sunday-showcase-child-centered-linky.html

    Bernadette

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  5. Love it! We have so many issues with counting coins, hope this helps!

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