Pictures That Make Cents

As I’m sure I’ve mentioned recently, my kiddies are really into math right now, so we’re exploring the many ways that math is important in the world. One of the most valuable things you can do with math is count your money.

Anytime I see a coin laying around the house I will pick it up, show it to the nearest kid (assuming that kid is one of mine of course) and say “what is this called and what is it worth?” If the kid is right that it is, for example, a nickel worth five cents, they get to put the coin in their piggie bank and keep it. Not only does that keep our countertops clean, it also reinforces the names and values of the coins for the kiddies.

Today we decide to play with the money that the kids had earned. We dump the money out on the table and I say, “Who can make Mommy a flower worth $1.05?”

All kinds of flowers come back:

Then we do some other dollar amounts and shapes. Circles worth $0.25, stars worth $2, and lots of other combinations. I let one kid pick the shape and the other pick the amount and for the next one they switch.

Then we change it up again. I tell the kids to make a pretty picture out of money and then add it up to see what the picture is worth.

This was much more challenging but well worth it. (What is it with me and the puns? J ) Eventually we get to a big picture with all of their money in it and the kids are so excited that they can count it all.

So channel your inner Scrooge McDuck and play in your money. Fun with math is priceless!

<3 Pedigreed Housewife

Comments

Helping Hands Olympics

As the school year starts to come to a close, and we prepare for next year, I’ve been going to many preparatory meetings at the kids’ school about next year. Of all of the information I was inundated with, one alarming fact, which was actually said offhand in response to a question, stuck out. Many kids nowadays don’t have the coordination and hand strength to tie their shoes or even to write. Apparently when we substitute things like climbing trees for video games and written letters for emails, our kids are losing the muscles in their hands. It was said that most kids by what I think was 3 rd grade don’t have the muscles in their hands to write a multiple page paper at one sitting. It was also said that most Kindergarteners not only can’t tie their shoes, but have never even been presented with the opportunity to try to tie their shoes in today’s world of slip-ons and Velcro. That’s really alarming (and sociologically interesting) to me! So today I want to work on de

Gripping Geometry

Both of my kids know their basic shapes (square, triangle, circle) very well. Briana even knows all of the basic extended shapes (pentagon, octagon, star, oval, rectangle, heart, and diamond). Abigail gets the extended shapes correct some of the time but not always yet. I credit the kids’ love of puzzles, specifically the Melissa and Doug puzzle that shouts out each shape’s name in a weird monotone if you put it in the correct space. At this point I think that there is a diminishing return in adding dodecahedron to their vocabulary or splitting the triangle into isosceles and equilateral and the rectangle into a parallelogram and a trapezoid. That being said I do want to expand on their knowledge of shapes (and spending the day on shapes will reinforce what they already know too). So this week I will literally expand the shapes for the kids- Squares into cubes Rectangles into boxes or cuboids Circles into cylinders and spheres Triangles into pyramids and cones First we

A Breath of Fresh Air

While we were on a Look and See Adventure this week (for some reason these never seem to get old to any of us), we came across a big open field with trees lining the back of the field. It was breathtaking and there was no traffic on the road so we pulled over to admire nature’s beauty for a few minutes. Briana asked me why there are no trees on the field part and I told her that someone most likely chopped them down. She wanted to know why someone would cut down a tree so I told her that we make paper and lots of things out of trees. She followed up by asking why didn’t they cut down all the trees then and make more paper. I told her that we didn’t want to cut down all of the trees because they give us air to breathe and they give all the little squirrels, that Abby was cooing are “so cute”, some place to live. As we drove along, Briana kept asking about how and why we breathe trees and I explained to her that we breathe out carbon dioxide and the trees and other plants

Pedigreed Housewife World

Search This Blog