Kids love to cut things up, especially things that they aren’t allowed to cut up… So when it was time to review money during our fractions unit, I thought it might be fun to let them chop up some money! (Play money, of course, but it was still just as fun!) This lesson turned out to be so much fun and the kids ended up with money pieces that we could use again and again! Here’s the teacher-sized version:
Each kiddo made their own kid-sized version. I made a template with a dollar bill on the front and the matching coin pieces on the back. I posted the template with a coin sort and some word problems on TPT.
We began by discussing a half-dollar coin. How much is it worth? Why is it called a HALF-DOLLAR? (This really blew some of my kids minds! A half-dollar is worth half a dollar??) If we want to cut a dollar bill in half, how many pieces should we end up with? Then the kids got to CUT THE DOLLAR! They labeled both pieces with the fraction, the word form, and the coin value. Then we discussed quarters. We linked this to time. What does it mean if it’s a quarter past or a quarter til? When it was time to chop it up, we began by cutting the dollar in half again and discussed how 2 quarters is the same as half a dollar. Once we worked with dimes we had that same discussion again. (On the dimes you have to cut it longways in half…) If you have half a dollar in dimes, how many would you have? The discussion was awesome.
I ended by giving the kids some different fraction/money problems and they used the coin pieces to solve. As a review, we played a game with the pieces where they turned everything dollar bill side up and then predicted the coins underneath. It was such a fun lesson. I love when things actually work out the way I planned!
😉 Kady
