Our 4’s classes have started to learn about money and why it’s a necessary part of our lives. We talked about what we use money for, such as buying food or paying for clothes and toys. We also discussed how we get money through doing jobs and working. We learned that there are different types of money, coins and bills, and what the value of each one is.
In small groups we sorted our money into piles based on their value and decided which one had the most money. Sometimes you need to see something to really understand it. When you see 100 pennies next to a dollar bill, it helps to reinforce that a penny is worth 1 cent. We practiced counting by 5’s when counting the nickels and counting by 10’s when we were counting out dimes. We learned that 100 pennies is the same as a dollar but that a dollar is much easier to carry around because it weighs a lot less than 100 pennies. Can you imagine paying for groceries with pennies? No way! And that sometimes we use a debit card to pay with cash from our bank account without actually carrying our money with us. We also learned that a quarter is worth 25 cents or 1/4 of a dollar. When you have 1/4 of something it is called a quarter of whatever you are measuring, which is how this coin got it’s name.
Money is essential to our lives and although it might seem like a lot for 4 and 5 year olds to comprehend, they picked it up very easily and we’re eager to learn more. Over the next few weeks we will be working with money to help better understand it and reinforce what we have learned.
