Tutoring

MONEY

1. For this activity, you will need a penny, a nickel, a dime, a quarter, a loonie and a toonie. Please review with your child the names and amounts of each coin.

2. With your child, explore how many ways you can make different money amounts (e.g., 7 cents can be made using one nickel and two pennies or seven pennies). Ask your child to draw these answers on a sheet of paper.

4. With your child, explore how many ways can you make one dollar using the same coins? (i.e., one dollar can be made with 100 pennies, 10 dimes, 4 quarters, or 1 loonie). Ask your child to write these answers on a sheet of paper and to memorize them. The next night, see review this information with them and then see what they can recall. You may need to use actual coins to help them remember.

5. This week, help your child count up a pile of pennies (or drawings of circles with 1c written in them). So, you should be hearing them say, “1 cent, 2 cents, 3 cents, 4 cents, etc.,” until all the pennies have been counted up. Help them to count up piles of nickels, dimes, and quarters. (This should be easy because they have been practicing counting by 2’s, 5’s, 10’s and 25’s).

6. For this activity, you will need a pile of different coins. This week, you will be working with your child on how to figure out the amount of a group of coins. Make sure that the pile of coins you are going to “add up” is not more than one dollar (it gets too confusing). In front of your child, show how you sort the coins into groups of pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters. First, count up all of quarters. Then, count up all the dimes, then the nickels, then the pennies. You might count something like this: 25, 50, 60, 70, 80, 85, 90, 95, 96, 97. This pile of coins equals 97 cents. You might need to take a few nights to show your child how you do this. After a while, ask them to count with you. Get them to do more and more of the job until they are able to do all of it themselves.

This is the approach that I have been using in class and it seems to work. If your child is having a lot of difficulty, try doing it with only pennies, nickels, and dimes) counting quarters is harder – only start using them when your child is good at counting pennies, nickels and dimes.) Another trick is to use a number line from 0 – 100. At first, use only a few coins (i.e., dimes, nickels and pennies.) Ask your child to sort the coins. Let’s say that there are two dimes, a nickel, and three pennies. Ask your child to put a counter on the 0. He takes the first dime and moves the counter 10 marks. Then he takes the second dime and moves the counter another ten marks along the number line. Then he takes the nickel and moves the counter 5 marks. For the three pennies, he moves the counter three more marks. His counter should be on the number 28. That will tell him that the pile of coins is 28 cents. Please watch your child closely to make sure that he is moving his marker correctly. If he is having difficulty, you might want to play a game like Snakes and Ladders with him in order to help him learn how to move a counter correctly.

7. Ask your child to look in a newspaper flyer and cut out pictures of items that he likes. What coins and bills would he need to pay for them? (e.g., A bottle of pop might cost $2.99. She would have to draw a toonie, 3 quarters, and 2 dimes and 4 pennies.) This activity is hard for many children. Please be ready to work with them and help as needed.

Practice

Please note that this is a difficult activity. Not all children will be ready to do this. If you do decide to try it, please do it closely with your child to ensure that they are successful. Even if it is really hard and your child cannot do it, I would suggest that you complete it and let your child watch how you do it. Let them know that they will be able to do it eventually.

For this activity, you will need a flyer from a fast-food restaurant or a flyer from a store. Pretend to give your child 5 dollars. She can buy whatever she wants from the store as long as she does not spend more than 5 dollars. What can she buy? How much change will she have left over? If you want to make it really difficult, see if she can spend exactly f 5 dollars by buying the items in the flyer.

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