Fun With Money

Wow, that post title gets me all excited. I love having fun with money, as in seeing how much I can get for just a little bit of $$; but, that isn't what this post is about. Miles is learning all about money in school right now. In one of our Math books, this cute little game was introduced yesterday. We actually did this when Reed was in Kindergarten also, and it was fun (at least one day's worth of fun... I'll take it). It's so simple you'll wish you had thought of it. The lesson was about following directions as well, so here are the directions:

Toss The Penny

Put a muffin tin near a wall. Stand 1o steps away. Toss a penny. Try to make it go into a hole. How many pennies can you get into the hole?

We of course had to add a little competition to the game, so we made each hole worth a certain number of points. It was Miles' idea to have that bonus 50 point hole... with stars and all.

As you can see, we also stepped it up a notch and put the muffin tin on the recliner, so the judge could swivel the chair and make it just that much more difficult. (Again, Miles' idea) And we did a few rounds blind-folded. We are all about the difficulty level here. (**you might notice that Miles isn't exactly standing 10 steps away in these pictures. This was our 115th round, so we're starting to get a little lax here.)

Another way we are reinforcing the money lessons is with this cute video I found at the library. Dancing and singing pennies, nickels, and dimes...dollar bills with electric guitars??? What more could you want in a lesson? Miles liked it alot and learned some new things. Reed mostly rolled his eyes, although it wasn't intended for him anyway. He chose to sit in and watch though, and I think secretly he was entertained. It was definitely a cute way to review your money skills.

If only we could find some videos on a 4th grade level with dancing parallelograms and quadrilaterals with guitars. Then we'd have it made!