Money is a necessary life skill, and these kindergarten money activities will make teaching money easier! We all like money. We all spend it. Just peek in my closet and you will see where I like to spend my money. So it’s a MUST-TEACH skill in our classrooms. And because it’s so tangible for our students, the engagement happens naturally. And it’s money, so it’s fun. We use our Math It Up: Money creation for our money lessons and activities in our classroom.
For our money unit, each child creates a money journal. This is where they do their independent work following our whole group mini-lessons. This money journal is very much like our research journals for our TKS Research Projects, which the students obsess over! So it made sense to do a money journal as well!
Kindergarten Money Activities
We start the money lessons by reading Alexander, Who Used To Be Rich Last Sunday, and talk about why we need money!
Please note that we need money “to pay taxes!” KIDS ya’ll!
For each coin, we create a circle chart or anchor chart to identify its name, value, and other attributes.
Another kindergarten money activity is to make this money anchor chart. We identify the coin, and the value! After we complete the whole group lesson, students complete their own money tree!
Kindergarten Money Activities: Independent Work
Students also do independent work with sorting coins, coloring coins, and coin values.
We also work on counting coins with our piggy bank activity where students have to put the correct amount of money into the piggy bank.
And finally we ask the kids: “What would you do if your money could talk?” and then they get to make their own money person! They color coins, cut them out and glue them onto a person to make their money person. Then they count the coins to see how much their money person is worth!
Kindergarten Money Lesson: Coin Game
In this game, we are using the large coin cutouts from our Math It Up! resource. I say a coin name or coin value, and students hold up the correct coin!
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