Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Investigating Coins

We have just started our unit on money.  We always start by reviewing coin identification.  We do this every day during calendar, but it still seems to be difficult for so many students.  We make our coin sticks that they can hold up to show the correct coin.
 
These are also fun for the variety of YouTube songs out there on money (most of my favorites were among the ones that Harry Kindergarten recently took down, but there are still a couple out there!).  I also had cards with descriptions on them (free for you at the bottom of this post) that I would call out and the students had to hold up the correct coin.








This year, we took our coin identifying one step further.  I decided to really take a closer look at our coins and start comparing them.  We used magnifying glasses to look very closely at our four different coins.  We looked to see what was written on all of our coins, front and back, what the edges looked like, and how their sizes compared.  We noticed that each coin had its amount or name written on the back.  This is a great help when we are unable to decide which one is the nickel, dime, and quarter when only looking at the tails side.  We also noticed that all of the coins contain the following words: Liberty, United States of America, and In God We Trust.  My students thoroughly enjoyed having this time to truly inspect our coins closely and see what we could find.

We didn't stop with this simple investigation however.  We went on to create Venn diagrams for our coins.  We used hula hoops to make big Venn Diagrams.  I gave each group a set of cards with descriptions of the coins.  The students had to work together to sort their cards into the correct places on their Venn diagrams.


















 








 


Do you want a copy of the cards so that you can do these same activities with your kids?  Be sure to check them out!
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Coin-Identification-Cards-1233493


Don't forget that our sale starts today!!

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Jessica-Hamilton


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