With formal school lessons coming to an end this Thursday, I am very much looking forward to being able to zero in on target areas with my 7 yr old, where she has struggles. Two areas – math (all of it, she detests math) and her vowel sounds.  She learned them last year, but now struggles with them, even though she can read (which seems odd). Today in our math lesson, instead of doing the math problems with pencil and paper, we used pennies.  I read the problems outloud to her, and had her solve it using the pennies.  I did this with Jessica, 8 years ago, and for whatever goofy reason, I'd forgotten about using manipulatives this way.  By the time Jordan was done with her problems, she was whipping through those pennies like she'd been doing it her whole life. 

It was a blessing to see her "get it".

One other area I really want to focus on with all 3 of the little ones, is learning the value of money.  Until now they just haven’t been interested, so it wasn’t working.  Now they’re interested, and here’s a nifty sounding tip I’ve picked up:

Money: Learn penny, nickel, dime, and quarter. Start by placing piles of pennies in equivalent amounts next to each coin.(for those in Canada, with loonies and twoonies – we’ll be using quarters instead of pennies, for the loonie,, then two loonies, for the twoonie, if that makes any sense) Count a pile of nickels by fives, dimes by tens. Explain that 100 equals one dollar. Count like-coins until their value is understood, then mix coins and count. Playing store is one of the best ways to teach the value of money.

Playing store in grade school, was one of the fondest memories I have, of public school.  I don’t know that I can say it really taught me a lot about the value of coins (maybe it did and I just don’t remember?) but it sure was fun. 

This would be a good time to hit the dollar store for plastic toy food items, and blank stickers to price them all.  Rainy, stormy summer days in Ontario, will be good days for shopping at the Rolfe Country Store.

SDG