Early Money Practice

 Little Angel loves to work with money when I pull out this work! The basket contains small toys around the house with price tags. I have the amount that it "costs" on one side and a control picture on the back to show what coins should be used to "purchase the item."

 It also contains exact coins needed to purchase all items in the basket.

She pulls out the "items for sale" out of the basket. She looks at the tag and then chooses which coins to use to "buy" the toy.

I print the "price" of the item on one side of the tag and placed pictures of the coins that Little Angel should have chosen on the other side of the tag as a "control."

I created two levels: An easy level (green tags) where Little Angel only has to choose values 1cent to 4cents, or choose whether the item cost a nickel, dime, or quarter.

The more advanced "orange tags" require Little Angel to combine simple coin combinations (i.e. 11 cents, 6 cents, 14 cents ... nothing tricky such as combining two dimes, a dime and nickel, etc.) This will be presented at a later time.

In the past, I have created my control pictures by finding pictures of coins on the internet and reducing them to a smaller size to fit on the tag. However, I came across these stickers at the Dollar Tree and the pictures of the coins were just the right size for this activity. The coin combination pictures fit perfectly on the back of the tags.... only $1 per sticker pack.... which saves on my printer ink!

The Dollar Tree has become my new best friend! I haven't decided how I am going to use the bills yet, my palms are itching to use them, but my brain isn't quite ready to come up with the ideas!