Money Chants & Touch Points

When asking each grade level teacher what math topics need the most work, their answers are always the same: time, money, and basic facts. We tried to hit these pretty hard every day during our summer session. For the facts, we used our Giraffe Math, and for time, we used our over-sized clock.

Earlier in the summer I found numerous money memory helpers on Pinterest - imagine that! We used these every day and included copies in the kids' O.W.L. Binders at the end of the session so they could refer back to or practice them.

For touch point money, each blue dot is worth 5, and the line is worth one. To count the picture above, we would touch each touch point and count (the quarter makes a 'Z' when you count), "5, 10, 15, 20, 25, (the dime is top then bottom) 30, 35, (center of nickel) 40, (slide your finger across the line on the penny) 41. 41 Cents." I had big coins that I found at Dollar Tree and put blue sticky circles (like the kind you would use at a garage sale) on each of the points. We would hand out random coins to students and have them come to the front of the group and touch the points as the group counted. When we handed out skill checks half-way through and at the end of our session, we found that many of the kids did use these to count their change, and they counted accurately! Yay!

For the chants/poems, we used this one from Blogger, Dragonflies in First every day. They're cute and color coded. I love that combination! We enlarged them, cut them out, and put them on a binder ring. We would rehearse it about 5 times a day and we would pick one of our students to be the leader to hold it and flip the cards.

Another copy of the chant/poem combined with the touch points is available from Erica Bohrer's First Grade. These versions are really high quality cute polka-dot posters. She also has individual mini cards that we printed and had the kids cut out and put on binder rings for their own flash cards.

Finally, Amy from The Land of Second Grade has some really fun money activities posted. Check them out!