Our Unit Study on Money

We finished Ancient Greece on Monday and are moving onto a unit study on money. My goals for this unit is to get the little ones (especially Goldilocks) to understand the names and values of coins and how to add them up to a dollar. To make this unit more challenging for Tom Sawyer (who already knows all of the coin values and how to add them up), I am making this a math/literature study. We will be reading My Rows and Piles of Coins by Tololwa M. Mollel, which is a wonderful book about a little boy in Africa who tries to save up enough money to buy a bike so he can help his mother get to the market more easily. We will make a lap book to go along with this book. Tom Sawyer will be doing a lot of advanced money combinations and working on understanding banking skills. He also is very interested in saving his allowance and has been doing a good job of it. All the children will work on paying for things and making correct change. Tom Sawyer will also work on learning the value of special coins (half dollar and such). It has become obvious that Tom Sawyer is going to have to break away from the girls in his lessons very soon. He often knows already what I am about to teach, and I don't even know where he learned the information! Schoolwork comes so easily to him. Little Red Riding Hood is learning fine in her kindergarten materials and Goldilocks (age 8) with all her special issues is working below kindergarten in some areas and a bit more into kindergarten in others. I am really starting to see that Tom Sawyer is being held back in some areas, and I will have to either do his lessons separately or do more advanced multi-level teaching than I have been doing. I will see if I can do the advanced multi-level teaching with him in this unit study.
(Our unit study corner)

We kicked off this unit study by going to our local hands-on museum to see Moneyville! The kids had a blast in this special exhibit, and it ties in so nicely with our unit study. We plan to go back at least one more time before it leaves. 



The girls loved being bank tellers.  After about an hour of playing in Moneyville, Goldilocks could tell me how many quarters were in a dollar. That doesn't mean she will remember it this morning, but she did know the correct answer for a while.


Tom Sawyer got some help from his big brother at the lemonade stand. They were making a very nice profit by the time they were through.


They had lots of self-correcting puzzles to help the kids learn their money values. Puzzles are one of Little Red Riding Hood's favorite things. Overall, it was a great exhibit and a wonderful kick-off to our unit study.

Blessings, Dawn