Teaching Children About Money

There is no shortage of free printable worksheets to teach children about coins and money. But since doing school in more of a Charlotte Mason style, I have been trying to stay away from worksheets and busy work.  CM believed that the best way to teach children money was to let them handle and count real coins and bills. 

Printable Coins for Kids

As I thought about this approach I realized that I rarely have cash on hand. I have been using my check card for most purchases for over a decade now. But I did find this realistic printable sheet of coins. There are several pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, and one half dollar on the page. (This is not a free site but you can print out the first 5 printables for no charge.) 

I let the children color the coins themselves.

Then I cut them into strips like so.

And I folded the strips in half and pasted them, matching up the front and back of the coins as best I could.

 

I cut out the first penny and then realized that I was in for quite a task of cutting out all of those coins. Thankfully, my 6 year old daughter offered to  help. I knew that the coins wouldn't be as neat as if I did them myself but I didn't want to turn down her help and hurt her feelings (and create extra cutting for myself.) So, I showed her and my 7 year old how to cut right outside of the black line and to take their time. And you know, they did great!

The coins aren't perfect but the children had a great time cutting them out (I would not have) and they got very excited when I told them that I was going to laminate them with my handy dandy laminator so that we could have them for a long time. 

Printable Play Money

I also laminated the full size play money that I printed out. I was going to print out the different denominations on different colored sheets of paper, like Donna Young suggested. But instead, I decided to make the play money look as realistic as possible. I opted to use white construction paper (which is really off white) for all of the bills.

Money Board Games for Kids

What I was really hoping to find was a free printable board game about money, something similar to this one:

This game isn't that much at Amazon but I try to use as many free resources as possible. If I spent just a few bucks on every new unit or lesson, that would still add up to quite a bit over the course of the school year.

So I kept searching. I have yet to find a printable money game but I did find instructions on how to make a game myself. I plan on making and laminating one "board" for each child. And we'll use the paper coins for the game. It looks like it will only take a few minutes to put together.

An Online Game to Teach About Money

• Spending Spree 

     

Printable Money Games

These printable money flashcards  and money dominoes looked like they will  be very useful as well. Instead of laminating them I just printed them out on white card stock. They aren't as sturdy as the play money. But, I figure they'll last long enough for the children to master money.

Poems About Money for Children

Here is a poem about coins to help children remember them easier. 

Penny, penny,
Easily spent
Copper brown
and worth one cent.

Nickel, nickel,
Thick and fat,
You're worth five cents.
I know that.

Dime, dime,
Little and thin,
I remember,
You're worth ten.

Quarter, quarter
Big and bold,
You're worth twenty-five
I am told! 

Half dollar, Half dollar, 

giant size,
Worth 50 cents 

to buy some fries.

Dollar, Dollar, 

Green and long,
Worth 100 cents, 

You can't go wrong!!!


And my children always find educational rap songs fun to learn.


The Money Rap

Well, I know a song
It's really kind of funny
It's all about coins
And learning to count money.

Pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters
Pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters

Now a penny means one (hold out 1 finger)
And a nickel means five (hold out 5 fingers)
Dimes are worth ten (hold out 10 fingers)
And quarters twenty five (flash... 10 twice & then 5)

Pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters
Pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters

Five pennies in a nickel
(hold out 1 hand- fingers stretched)
Two nickels in a dime
(hold out 2 fingers)
Five nickels in a quarter
(hold out 1 hand - fingers stretched)
You'll know it every time!
(using both hands do a downward motion)

Pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters
Pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters
Yeah!!! 

Playing Store

We will definitely be using Donna Young's suggestions for playing store. I printed out a sheet of price tags. The children cut them out and put string through the holes that I punched out for them. They already own 2 cash registers; so, we are all set. 

Fun, Fun, Fun

The play money turned out better than I expected. The children are having a blast learning about money.

 

Use Ray's Arithmetic and Math Worksheet Generators to Teach Homesschool Math for Free

The very first public domain math book that I ever heard of was Ray’s New Primary Arithmetic for Young Readers. And after skimming the book it quickly became evident that this is an excellent resource for teaching addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. I suspect that the book could be used as the sole means of teaching arithmetic. But I use it along with a few other free resources available online to help my kids become proficient in basic math.


Flash Cards are Your (and Your Kids) Friends
Flash cards are my favorite way to have children memorize math facts. I know it’s old school. But it worked way back when and it still works today. I printed off addition flash cards for numbers 1 - 9 from Apples4theTeacher.com. And I found 10 through 12 on another site, the name escapes me right now. But there are numerous free printable flash cards available online; they’re just a search away.

I printed them out, cut them all to roughly the same size, and laminated them. Yes, it was time consuming. But I invested some time and now I have cards that are already being used by 2 of my students and will be able to be passed down to my youngest when the time comes.

Once the children have their addition facts memorized then I will go through the same process for subtraction, multiplication, and division. I teach in the same order as Ray’s Arithemetic does. 


Math Worksheet Generator
To reinforce the math facts I print out math worksheets from Super Kids. You can customize the sheets to be exactly what you need. For example, if my daughter has half of the 3s addition facts memorized then I generate a worksheet with a minimum number of “0” and a maximum number of “6” and all of the numbers are added to 3. Take a look at the generator and you’ll see what I mean. 


What’s 3 + 5?
I also quiz the children randomly throughout the day to see if they are truly memorizing their work. It’s not unusual for me to ask them a few facts at the kitchen table or while they’re playing with toys or whatever. I also sometimes make a game out of the flash cards. I quiz the child and if she gets the answer right then she gets to keep the card, if not I keep the card. Whoever has the most cards at the end of the game wins. This was my husband’s idea and the children actually started learning their facts quite quickly once there was some competition involved.


As you can see, it’s not that difficult to use public domain books in combination with other free online resources and come up with a very effective way of teaching arithmetic in your homeschool.