Working with Money
Lessons in this chapter
About Working with Money
Let's Go Shopping is the chapter where counting meets the real world, and it is harder than it looks because coins are not worth what their size suggests.
Identify Coins and Bills starts with recognition, and immediately breaks an assumption kids arrive with: a dime is smaller than a nickel but worth more. Value has to be learned, not inferred from size, and this is often a child's first encounter with a symbol whose worth is assigned rather than obvious.
Count Money is where the math sits. Counting a mixed handful means skip counting in different step sizes and switching between them, so a child counts by tens for the dimes, then by fives for the nickels, then by ones. This is exactly the skip counting from Compare, Order & Skip Count, applied where it pays off.
Understand Money Transactions closes the chapter with paying and change. Working out change is subtraction with a purpose, and it is one of the few contexts where kids can check their own answer against something real.
Three lessons, three worksheets, worked in the page. Identify Coins and Bills comes first, then Count Money, the counting money worksheet where skip counting by fives and tens finally has a use, and Understand Money Transactions covers paying and change. All three are free and scored as you go.
Frequently asked questions
Three lessons. Identify Coins and Bills names each one and its value, which is harder than it sounds because a coin's size says nothing about what it is worth. Count Money then adds mixed amounts, leaning on skip counting by fives and tens, and Understand Money Transactions covers paying and working out change. Money is not a first grade Common Core topic; it appears in second grade Measurement and Data (2.MD).
Recognizing coins and bills, knowing what each is worth, counting a mixed amount, and understanding paying and getting change.
Because size does not match value. A dime is smaller than a nickel but worth twice as much, so the value has to be learned rather than worked out by looking.
Largest value first, grouping same coins together: count the dimes by ten, then the nickels by five, then the pennies by one. Switching step size mid-count is the skill.
Directly. Counting dimes is counting by ten, counting nickels is counting by five. The skip counting chapter comes first for that reason.
It is subtraction, but it is usually solved by counting up from the price to the amount paid, which is the addition-to-subtract strategy from Relate Addition and Subtraction.