Teaching Coins

Ugh! Blah! Face palm....with a slight shake of the head....Teaching coins is hard!  These are my reasons why:


1.  Who was the idiot who decided that they should make coins sizes that really don't make sense to younger kids? Why is the dime the littlest coin?  It should seriously be the penny, the coin that is worth the smallest amount!  It should then get bigger according to worth.  Don't ya think?

 2.  If you're going to pick two presidents, who kind of look alike because they both have pony tails and are both on a silver coins, don't you think it would be nice to have them facing different directions?  Abraham Lincoln is facing right, while the other presidents are facing left.

3.  Dear person who thought it would be a cool idea to change the back of quarters to represent each state,

You obviously never thought how hard it would be to teach children that a quarter can be an eagle, a train, horses, a bird, etc.  I know they are were cool to collect, but really...why did you need to change it?

Sincerely,
All of the Teachers in America

4.  Also, it really would be nice if all the coins had different looking backs.  The penny and the nickel both have a building.  I know, the nickel has a building with a dome at the top, but it would be so much easier if it could have been something different.

So you might be thinking,"Teaching coins wouldn't be so bad.  Teach them the different colors."  My reply is this, "Second graders had to take a test years ago on paper that had the coins in black and white.  So they needed to know the difference between all of the coins fronts and backs without color." 

I never knew how hard it would be to teach coins, until I had to.  Once I had to think like a second grader, I realized how confusing it can be.  Let's throw trying to learn a new language on top of it and any emotional problems a child might be dealing with and......it could take a while. 

One year, I was teaching students to add coins and quickly realized that almost all of my students still got confused on one or two coins (even though they were supposed to learn them in first grade).  I realized that I needed to take a step back and teach them to identify the coins before we could even try to count them.

Everything that I studied at college, taught me to be explicit with my teaching.  Never assume that they know something.  So I decided to make a PowerPoint and a book (instead of a boring worksheet) to help them really focus on the details of coins.  It really helped them to stop and really look at the coins when they were doing other assignments or tests.  My students helped point out differences to me.  Example:  George Washington, on the quarter, has a really long neck without a shirt. Thomas Jefferson, on the nickel, has a shirt with a collar. I worked really hard making this stuff and thought it should go to good use by helping others instead of wasting away on my computer.  So I thought I would share it on my blog.  Good luck!!


I made this book so that when you copy it front to back and staple it in the middle that the pages will be correct.  That's why when you look at it on here, it will look weird, with page one on one side and page ten on the other. It turns out though. If for some reason, it's not printing correctly, leave me your email in a comment and I can email it to you.

Coin PowerPoint

What do you do to teach your students or children about coins?