We have been learning about money in my IELC classroom of year 4/5s. In this time I have observed that some of my students have been finding it difficult to add money amounts. I have been trying to think of ways to develop this skill in a variety of fun and engaging ways.
Yesterday in the money resource box I found laminated cards which had single values written on them. I also found some dice that have little whiteboard squares on each side of the dice to write values (5c, 10c, 20c, 50c, $1, $2) on them. If you had coin dice, it would be easier as the whiteboard marks do wipe off during the game.
In groups of 4-5, each student had a piece of scrap paper and pencil to record their amounts. They were given a card with a value on it by the banker (me). Taking turns they roll the dice and if the rolled value is less than the value on their card, they recorded it and had another roll. The idea is to continue rolling, recording the value, adding the amounts without going over their target value. If they rolled over their target value, the dice was then passed to the next person. Once they had made the exact value shown on their card, they received another card from the banker. The winner was the one who had collected the most cards.
If you were talking about change, then you could alter the game to have students roll the dice and if the value is higher than the value on their card, calculate the change/additional money to put towards their next card/target value.
