As DJ began working with skip counting by 5’s, I began to think of money, particularly 5 pennies adding up to a nickel and 5 nickels adding up to a quarter. I thought I remembered seeing a money game or coin game on a blog somewhere but when I went looking I found several versions but none that were exactly what I was looking for. So I made my own!

I made this template in word using Google images of coins and dollar bills. I also googled the dimensions of each coin to be sure my pictures were the same size. I printed 2 “game boards” and laminated them. 

Then I gathered the rest of the supplies. For a 2 players game I collected 15 pennies, 15 nickels, 8 quarters, 2 dollars and 2 dice. I did not need that many of each coin but I made a point to have more than I needed because I know my son. He likes to play games within games (Oh that coin is hiding because it’s scared!) so I wanted to be sure I could just say to get another one. 

Before we started, I reviewed skip counting by 5’s with him and then I showed him the pennies and nickels. We counted out 5 pennies and I told him that a nickel is 5¢ so we could exchange. Then we set out 5 nickels and we skip counted by 5’s to get to 25¢. I told him a quarter was 25¢ so we could exchange 5 nickels for a quarter. 

DJ needed one more piece of information before he could get to a dollar. He had to know what a quarter was. I pulled out our fraction skittles and showed them to him. He has been using the word “half” very accurately for some time now, although I never taught it to him – he just picked it up. So I gave him the whole skittle and asked what he would get if we cut it down the middle. He then picked up the two half skittles and said “two halves!”  I then pulled out the quarter pieces and asked how many pieces we would have if we cut the halves in half. He correctly answered four. 

At that point I explained that each piece was called a quarter and you had to have 4 quarters to get back to a whole. I then showed him a quarter and told him it was named quarter because you needed 4 of them to make a dollar. 

And then the race began. DJ started with the roll of one die. He rolled a 6!  He counted out 6 pennies and began placing them on his game board. As soon as he had all 5 penny slots filled, he exchanged them for a nickel, placing it on his board, and then put his 6th penny in the first penny slot. 

We started off neck-and-neck but at one point he rolled a few high numbers in a row. It wasn’t long before he realized when he rolled a 5 he could just take a nickel and bypass the exchanging. But when he rolled 6’s I still had him count out pennies first. It wasn’t long before he had enough nickels to change to a quarter. On his last roll he had 3 quarters, 4 nickels and 4 pennies. For those of you that can add you know that was 99¢. No matter what he rolled, he would win the game. What I didn’t expect when it came to his turn, he placed the die down showing 1 pip and said, “I don’t need to roll because I only need 1 penny to win”.  

I think I can count that as a win for me too!!