Math Madness Wednesday: Counting Money

I decided to change the Math Madness Wednesday button a little bit. What do you guys think? I would love to hear your feedback!

Okay, on with the math! Although I know money is taught in school, I think a lot of the learning is done at home. Parents teach their personal values about money and model spending and saving with their children. I tend to do this year round with my kids, but during the summer, it is stressed even more. I don’t know if it is because I have more time with them or because they seem to want to spend more money in the summer! Either way, we practice counting and saving during the summer time.

As a mom and as a teacher, I have used books to combine the teaching going on in the classroom with discussions the kids can have at home. The book “Slugger’s Car Wash” is one of the books that helps open a conversation about money. It is one of the MathStart books by Harper Collins. If you haven’t heard of these books before, they are definitely worth checking out! They have math and science books and they all include a page of lesson ideas for the parent and/or teacher. In this book, the baseball team needs money for new jerseys so they decide to have a car wash. The track their money along the way, which lends itself to a great discussion about how to organize and count money (as well as how you have to work for money!). In fact, it would be a great opportunity to get some play or real money out and count along with them!

I also have some games that I use to make practicing money skills more fun. In my new MONEY BUNDLE, you can get 2 of my WILD card games (one for identifying coins and another for counting them), a set of task cards, a menu math activity, and a puzzle for identifying coins. In fact, the task cards are set up exactly the same way the kids count the money in Sluggers’ Car Wash, so it would be a great extension activity!