Monday, December 17, 2012

If you wanna be a pirate...

I told my students that if any of them wanted to be a pirate when they grew up, they better learn to count money.  So, last week we learned to count quarters. We practiced counting by 25's by making paper chains. The kids worked in groups of two and had to collaborate in order to complete their chain. Their chains had to have 25 rings in it.  We hung the chains up in our classroom with labels by them: 25, 50, 75, 100.


We then gave each student a bag of quarters and allowed them to purchase a book and a candy cane from   my aide and myself . They had to count the money out for us and if they had trouble they had to count it out several times until they were comfortable counting by 25's.





The kids were proud of the books that they purchased and enjoyed the cherry flavored candy canes.

We also practiced counting by 25's on our worksheet and colored correct number of quarters to go with the price tags of toys. We talked about the dollar sign and when to use it. We talked abut the decimal and what it meant.


As always when we do our flipped activities, my students worked cooperatively and quietly.  I'm always amazed at how they love project based learning!!! It's a joy to me!  I feel confident that these kids will make fine pirates!





1 comment:

  1. Lisbeth,

    I love project based activities, too. I love the idea of connecting the counting of money to being a pirate. Looks like a lot of fun learning to me. Thanks for sharing.

    Mona
    First Grade Schoolhouse

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