This lesson plan can be used for mostly 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade students. This activity uses excel to show different items and their costs. The students will figure out how many pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters it will take to buy each object and the different number of coins that will work. The students are able to fill in the different cells with the quantity of pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters that they think will be needed to buy that particular item. This is a great activity to help teach students the value of coins and how to add coins. On the website that I have listed below there is a link that takes you to the actual spreadsheet so you can see exactly what it is and how it works.
http://www.northcanton.sparcc.org/~technology/excel/files/counting_money.html
I could definitely see myself using this idea! I think it would be important that students know what each coin looks like and the value for each coin before beginning an activity like this, otherwise there may be a lot of confusion. It would be great practice, though, for students to familiarize themselves with money and see how many different ways they could make the correct amount of money with the change.
ReplyDeleteWith older students, the idea could be modified to include paper money and perhaps giving change.