Counting Coins
How you can help at home: By counting pennies, nickels and dimes, your child learns to count by ones, fives and 10s.
Learning to count change is an important life skill, but it is also a skill that many children have difficulty mastering. One way to assist your child is to build on his knowledge of counting to 100 by ones, fives and 10s.
What You'll Need
- Pennies, nickels and dimes
Here's How To Do It
Review counting to 100 with your child by ones, fives and 10s. Explain that counting to 100 in the various ways is similar to counting money.
Give your child a small number of coins to begin with, such as 12 pennies and six nickels and dimes. Show him how to count the pennies by ones, the nickels by fives and the dimes by 10s.
Separate the pennies, nickels and dimes and have your child count the coins by ones, fives and 10s. Mastering this skill requires a good bit of time, so don't expect your child to grasp it the first time.
This is a good activity to spread over a period of time, doing it for 10 minutes or so in one session.
Donna Adkins was Arkansas Teacher of the Year in 2004.
Updated May 2008
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