Making a Dollar with Quarters!

Materials...

4 Quarters

1 dollar bill

paper and pen

Directions...

Show your child the dollar bill and ask him/her how much it is? If they don't know you can show the number 1 and tell them that it's a one dollar bill.

Next show the quarters. Ask them if they remember what the name of this coin is? And how much it's worth.

On a sheet of paper write down that quarters are 25 cents and that a 100 cents are equal to 1 dollar. Then tell your child 'we are going to make a dollar with quarters! Can you guess how many quarters we need to make a dollar? I don't know.. let's find out together!'

We get to count by 25's because a quarter is 25 cents! (Counting by 25's can be difficult for younger children. I will explain how we did this in the following paragraph.) Place a quarter on the paper and put the number 25 on top of it. Next place the second quarter and put the number 25 on top of that one. Draw the plus sign in between and ask your child what's 25 cents+ 25 cents. It's 50 cents, is that a dollar? why or why not? We need a 100 cents to make a dollar and we only have 50. What do we need to do? add another quarter. Now let's count 25, 50, 75 do we have enough? Keep going until you reach a 100.

To add 25+25 ask your child what can we find in the number 25 (breaking the number down.)

If your child doesn't know how to break down the number yet, you can use a counting manipulative for example cheerios, buttons, crayons, etc. Count 25 cheerios and put them on the table. After you counted 1by1 ask how many cheerios do we have? That's right 25. Can you give me 10? Count together and take 10 out. Then you can ask "so in this number 25, is there a 10?Yes! Do you think there's another 10? Let's count and see." Count and take out another ten. "Do you think there's another ten? Let's count and see.. Oh we have a 5! So the number 25 has a 10+another 10 + a 5!"

Under the addition problem 25 + 25 write in paraphrases (10+10+5) + (10+10+5) now you can add by tens and 5's and write your answer =50. Repeat this procedure each time you need to add another quarter. Break down the number, write it down underneath in parentheses and count by 10's and 5's until you reach 100 cents!

When you reach a 100 cents go back and count by 25's one more time together to check your work. Then you can ask how many quarters did we use to make one dollar? Let's count and see. 4 quarters make one dollar! If you still have the sheet with the pennies, nickels and dimes from the other day's exercise you can compare 5 different ways to make a dollar. (the dollar bill, 100 pennies, 20 nickels, 10 dimes and the 4 quarters!) Emphasize that all 5 ways are equal. You can use our earlier example and say something like, "If you went to the store and wanted to buy a candy bar for 1 dollar, which one can you give the 100 pennies, 20 nickels, 10 dimes, 4 quarters or the 1 dollar bill? You can give any one of the choices because they are all equal! Which one do you think would be their 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th choice and why? First choice would be the dollar bill, then the quarters, then the times, then the nickels and last the pennies!"

Go over this concept a couple of times on different days until your child completely understands that quarters are 25 cents and that 4 quarters are equal to a one dollar bill.

Have fun!