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Coins

In following the ABC Jesus Loves Me 4-year-old curriculum, I've been doing some activities to introduce Silas to the different coins. For reasons unbeknownst to myself, he recognizes and weirdly loves nickels, but the rest are new.

First we did some coin rubbing with crayons. He struggled a little bit at first to hold the crayon on its side, but as you can see in the picture below, we eventually got a good outline to show up. 


The following week, as a fine-motor activity, I buried some coins in balls of playdough. The boys (Owen joined in this activity) had dig them out without using their thumbs. It's great for strengthening other muscles of the hand, which in turn helps with handwriting (or, in Silas's case, violin bow-hold). I didn't take any pictures, but here's a token "we play with playdough in our jammies" photo just for fun (messy kitchen counter and everything).


Last week, we got a litttle more specific and sorted a pile of coins by quarter, dime, and nickel. I picked up this tray at a dollar store a long time ago, intending to use it for sorting activities, and I think this is only the second time it's been used. Silas does not care for anything resembling a "school" activity too much, but was willing to comply if I sat next to him. Afterwards, we counted how many of each coin we had, and I was quite surprised to find out he could count individual items correctly into the teens (there were 14 quarters). He can count to 29 with no problem, but I haven't tested his one-to-one correspondence in a while. (Never mind the fact that he has no pants on. We're struggling with some toilet issues, and I get tired of doing extra laundry.)


We haven't talked about what the different coins stand for yet -- I'm pretty sure that's kindergarten or first grade math, not preschool -- but now I'm fairly certain he knows the physical differences between them!
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  1. K MagillOctober 11, 2016 at 10:54 PM

    I love the idea of making a challenge to dig coins out of play doh with no thumbs...have to try that! also, seems like a great idea to have kids sort coins even before they learn what they are...makes perfect sense, but I have never done that...now I will!

    ReplyDelete
  2. K MagillOctober 11, 2016 at 10:55 PM

    I love the idea of making a challenge to dig coins out of play doh with no thumbs...have to try that! also, seems like a great idea to have kids sort coins even before they learn what they are...makes perfect sense, but I have never done that...now I will!

    ReplyDelete

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