Learning How to Count Coins

Our school district is on week 2 of At-Home Learning. Israel’s class was working on counting coins before the break, so I wanted to continue that at home. As a former 2nd grade teacher, I know how important it is for students to understand how to identify and count coins. So, this past week I gathered up some of my first grade math activities, and we got to work!

Daily Word Problems

Each morning Israel started with a coin math problem. He glued these into a journal, read the question, and followed the directions. Most of the days he was identifying a particular coin and counting the collection. This helped get us focused for the day.

counting coins math journals

Game: Race to Fifty Cents

We played a few math games together to build on the skills that he already has. Race to 50 cents is a great game for coin identification and skip counting. Students spin a coin, identify that coin, and move that many spaces. This allows students to practice identifying the value of that coin. The first player to fifty cents is the winner! This is a quick game, so we were able to play several times!

Game: Spin, Graph, and Total

I absolutely LOVE this game for identifying coins, understanding values, and skip counting. Students spin a coin and graph the coin that was spun. Once a coin reaches the top of the graph, students skip count to find the total value of each coin.

Activity: Make a Match

Once I knew that Israel understood all of the coin values and how to count basic coin collections, it was all about the practice. He matched a collection of coins to the total value.

Interactive Notebooks: Identifying and Counting Coins

We did some paper and pencil work as well. I am trying to keep all of the work he completes at home in his interactive notebook, so these flap-books were great for that. We identified coins and practiced counting with these flap-books.

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learning how to count coins
learning to count coins

Teaching Resource

All of the activities mentioned in this post come from THIS teaching resource.

Hi, I'm Amy

Hey, y’all! My name is Amy Lemons and I am passionate about providing students with both engaging and effective standards-based Math and ELA lessons.

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