Counting Tens

Thank you for returning your Lenten Cans. We have been working hard to sort and count the coins inside. To sort the coins, we observed their color, dividing them into silver and copper.

This week we began to count the copper pennies. To keep track while counting we use a Ten Frame. The child puts a penny in each square to reach ten. 

Some children want to count every time to check that they have ten pennies, others retain the number and know that it will be the same. 

Once we have ten pennies, they go into a small cup. At this point we start counting by tens - ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty. It takes five cups of ten pennies to reach the fifty pennies necessary to fill a coin roll. 

As the children race against each other to see who can fill the coin roll fastest, they start making calculations, "If I've filled three cups, how many more cups do I need to fill?" To count the individual pennies they pick up one at a time but to fill the coin roll faster they can move several at once.

This is real world work and the children find great satisfaction in accomplishing their goal. We talk about how the money we collected is going to different countries to help children attend school. We are wondering how the money will get to them- by boat, by mail, by plane?