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Home > Archive > Jul 19, 2007

By Michelle M. Truman
A few days ago, I walked into a convenience store to purchase a bottle of water. The water, including tax, came to $1.09 and I handed the young man behind the counter a $5 bill. A moment later, I noticed he was having difficulty counting the change because the electronic cash register had not prompted him to give $3.91 back to me.
The register was giving him an error message, and without the computer to prompt him, he did not know the amount of change he needed to give me. He was frustrated, embarrassed, and nonplussed. As I left the store, I thought about how much time and guidance it takes for children to learn how to properly count, use, and identify coins and dollars. Therefore, it makes it important to begin this process at an early age.
Many people keep change containers around their homes, so it is a simple matter to break out that change and let your children use the coins as a “sorting” activity. This will provide opportunities for young children to become familiar with what coins look like without the added pressure of having to know how much they are worth just yet. A brief warning here: Make sure your child is old enough to know not to put the coins in his mouth because they could be a choking hazard.
Watch your child as she sorts the coins into piles. Is she sorting them into correct piles by size and/or color? These are easy identifiable characteristics for preschool and early elementary children. Once children are able to properly sort coins by color and size you can then teach them the names for each coin. When these two steps have been mastered, it is time to teach the value of the coins.
Kindergarten, first, and second grade students all need to work on counting coins until mastery has been achieved. An initial way to begin this process is by skip counting. Teach them to count pennies simply by counting up; to count nickels by skip counting by fives; and dimes by skip counting by tens. It is much more difficult for young children to skip count by 25 to learn the value of quarters, but if they can at least build to 100 that would be a great start.
Once skip counting has been mastered, your child is then ready to move on to adding coins together to create sums of money.
An excellent source for this process is The Money Instructor at http://www.moneyinstructor.com/parents.asp. A registration is required, but you can access the site free. The site includes printable worksheets, printable play money and has appropriate information, lessons, and practice with money for pre-kindergarten through 10th-grade students.
There are many teaching tools parents can use with their children to learn about money that do not require any additional effort except to include your child in the everyday situations in which money plays a part.
A brief example of a strategy is one I used with my youngest daughter when we went to a fast food drive-thru window. We would order and as soon as we were told the amount due, I would hand my wallet to my daughter, and she would try to count out the appropriate change. She really enjoyed this process and became familiar with how to add the coins together to make various change totals.
Once she had mastered that level of skill, she moved on to counting change amounts. If the total for dinner was $18.64, she would take out a twenty and try to count the change that I should receive back. When the teller would give me my change I would hand it to her and she would count it to make sure I received the correct amount. This type of real-world practice allowed her to experiment in a safe environment with real money. It also allowed me to watch her skill with money grow.
Money is in every facet of life, and the sooner we can arm our children with the knowledge of how to function in the monetary world, the better off they will be when it comes to financial stability. Teachers try to assist with this development within the constraints of the school systems, but it does not compensate for everyday practice with money. If you want your children to be responsible and smart with money, help them get familiar with it, use it, and save it.

Michelle M. Truman is a graduate of Dixie College and Southern Utah University and has a doctoral degree in curriculum and instruction with an emphasis in literacy from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She will serve WCSD as a staff developer beginning with the 2007-08 school year.

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