Introduction to Money

Today we did a little introduction to money-- coin identification, so that over the next few days we can do additional work counting and comparing amounts of money.  I started with a whole-class overview on how to identify a penny, nickle, dime, and quarter.  I have a set of large demonstration coins, and we examined each coin in turn, discussing features that students noticed.  Size and color are obvious markings, but the class was most interested in talking about the presidents featured on each coin and the fact that statue of Abraham Lincoln can be seen sitting inside the Lincoln Memorial on the back of the penny.  I actually did not know this about the Lincoln statue until a student told me about it.  I'm not really sure how much the other kids actually understood about the idea that you could see a tiny speck that is supposed to be a giant statue in a building that according to another child "looks like a trolley car."  Then again, the point of the lesson wasn't in national monuments or presidents, but in learning to identify coins.  Attending to these details definitely helped the children differentiate amongst the coins!  After our brief discussion, I handed out baggies with one of each coin and asked the children to hold up each coin in turn.  They were very successful with this little test.  The workshop part of our day included several math choices, one of which was to make your own set of pretend coins out of brown and gray construction paper.  Students really got into this activity and many tried to include Abraham Lincoln sitting inside the Lincoln Memorial!  This being an open-ended task, there was a range of quality in the coins produced, but I told them I needed to be able to identify the coins they made without being told which was which.  Again, in most instances, they were successful.