Money
Lessons in this chapter
About Money
Money in 4th grade is a two-lesson chapter that quietly ties together the fractions and decimals work either side of it.
Express Money in Fraction and Decimal Form makes the connection that money is a decimal system kids already use. A quarter is 25 cents, which is 0.25 dollars, which is one quarter of a dollar, and seeing all three as the same thing makes decimals concrete in a way that abstract examples do not.
Solve Word Problems on Money Using All 4 Operations is the applied lesson, and the four operations each have a natural money context: adding a bill, subtracting change, multiplying for several identical items, dividing to split a cost.
Money is the best arena for decimal arithmetic at this age because the answers are checkable against something real. A child who gets $4.70 when the change should be 70 cents knows immediately that something is wrong, which rarely happens with a bare decimal sum.
Both lessons open as a 4th grade math worksheet inside the page. Express Money in Fraction and Decimal Form comes first, and Solve Word Problems on Money Using All 4 Operations gives the applied math problems, worked one at a time and scored as you answer. They are free to try, with no login needed for your first 3.
Frequently asked questions
Express Money in Fraction and Decimal Form makes the connection that money is a decimal system children already use, so a quarter is 25 cents, 0.25 dollars and one quarter of a dollar all at once. Solve Word Problems on Money Using All 4 Operations is the applied lesson, with a natural money context for each operation. Money problems sit in the Common Core domain Measurement and Data (4.MD), and the chapter leans on the fraction and decimal work in Number and Operations with Fractions (4.NF).
Money is a decimal system. A quarter is 25 cents, 0.25 dollars and one quarter of a dollar all at once, which makes it the most concrete example of decimals kids have.
Because the answers are checkable against experience. A wrong answer in a money problem usually looks obviously wrong, which is not true of an abstract decimal sum.
All four: adding a bill, subtracting to find change, multiplying for several identical items, and dividing to split a cost between people.
One quarter, since there are 100 cents in a dollar and 25 is a quarter of 100. As a decimal it is 0.25.
Misaligning the decimal point when adding, so dollars end up under cents. Lining up the points is the same rule as any column sum.