Money, Money, MONEY! Part 3 of 3 {Jam-Packed Post!}

Welcome to the final installment of my Money, Money, MONEY! series. This installment is jam-packed with munee (as the kids like to spell it)!! In case you missed missed parts 1 and 2, click below to hop on over:

Part 1

Part 2

Math Centers Pack

Let's revisit the list of questions my students came up with at the beginning of our money unit:

We spent part of one lesson answering the question, "How much money does 100 quarters make?" Well, I brought in 100 quarters from home (which was amazing enough for them!) and we investigated!

I pulled out the bag of quarters and let the student who came up with the question take charge of the counting. Before we counted, we discussed the best way to count them. We talked about how making 10s in this case would not be a good idea because that will not make counting the dollars easier (kid language). We decided that since 4 quarters make $1.00 then we should make stacks of 4.

They were excited and surprised to find out that 100 quarters makes $25.00!

Money + Classroom Management = Success

My students desks are divided into 4 groups. Up until a few weeks ago, the groups were simply called Table 1, Table 2, Table 3, and Table 4. In the middle of the money unit, I changed the group names to coins in the hopes of helping with coin recognition (and to just switch things up a bit!). Here is a poor photo of the group labels (sorry, forgot to get a close-up!):

The groups earn tally marks for whatever I feel like following directions, working quietly, getting along, keeping things neat and tidy, etc. At the end of the week, the group with the most tally marks gets to eat lunch in the classroom on the following Monday! Here is where the group points are recorded (nothing fancy):

The daily points are on the left and the total number of points are kept on the right. Some days I forget about rewarding points. Oops.

We also have a class piggy bank they have started to earn money for. Now, I REALLY wanted to start this piggy bank on a particular day and I didn't bring home poster board to make the cute little piggy, so I had to improvise! I made the piggy and bank top out of construction paper and taped it to felt. (I wanted felt because velcro sticks very nicely to it and that is important since we will be exchanging coins frequently.) The main purpose of this bank is to practice counting money and exchanging equivalent amounts. We exchange pennies for nickels, nickels for dimes, and dimes and nickels for quarters!

We set a goal of 25 cents for our first reward. The reward they decided to work for was a class reading party. Well, they earned it Thursday and we had our party on Friday, our last day before spring break!! (Worked out perfectly!!) The students brought blankets, a pillow, and books from home and spread out around the room to read. We read books from home, books we have published, library books, and books on the iPads and iPods. First we started off by watching Duck! Rabbit! on Tumblebooks.

Here they are enjoying it!:

I also made them a snack to munch on out of our leftover 100th celebration snacks (goldfish, marshmallows, and pretzels). 

After reading for about 45 minutes, we concluded the party by watching Chicken BIG on Tumblebooks.

I leave you with Mr. Moneybags McGee! I never show my kids a sample when we create things because I am big on creative expression and individual interpretations of the project so I simply told them what the parts were and had them put them together how they saw fit. I am elated with how they came out!

Check out this guy! Haha! Love the freckles!

Whew! I am finished! I'm going to go start my spring break now!! Thanks for coming over!

Stay tuned for these upcoming posts!! Hoping to post all of these sometime in the next two weeks:

• 100th Day Festivities
• Seuss Week
• Calendar Math Mini-series
• Fun With Parts of Speech

And if you haven't heard about Amanda and Stacia's 300+ Followers Giveaway over at Collaboration Cuties, you MUST head over to check it out!! They are FABULOUS bloggers with super ideas (and some of my new blog buddies!) AND the giveaway prize includes a smorgasbord of products from them and some other great bloggers. The giveaway ends in a few days, so be sure to head right over and check it out!