I hope you all had a wonderful Spring Break. It is hard to believe that we are getting so close to the end of the school year. Only 32 days left!
We are in desperate need of wipes again! Please send a package to school with your child as soon as you can. We greatly appreciate your help with this!
Before Easter vacation our focus in Math was money. Money may be the most complex mathematical concept we teach in the early grades. Coins by their very nature are abstract. Most five year olds are convinced that fifteen pennies is a much greater fortune than four dimes. What a leap of faith we ask our primary children to make when we tell them that a nickel is worth five times as much as a penny and that one skinny little dime is worth twice as much as that nice fat nickel which looks so much like a quarter it's hard to tell the difference! The counting skills necessary to count even small sums of money are formidable: rote counting, one to one correspondence, and all the possible combinations of counting patterns for ones, fives, tens, and twenty-fives.
It takes our youngsters many experiences to gain the skills and understandings to deal with money. The good news is that money is magic to them!! It gives them a wonderful real life reason to learn!! You can help your child with this skill by giving them small amounts of change and have them sort the coins by their value. Then have them practice counting pennies by ones, nickels by fives, and dimes by tens! Your child should be able to identify a penny, nickel, dime, and quarter and state its value. Within the next week a money game will be coming home with your child. Please take some time each week to play it with your child.
I hope you are having a great week.
Blessings,
Mrs. Schumann