How to teach money and making change

Start by recognising and valuing coins, then practise adding coin amounts to a total. Introduce making change by counting up from the price, and finally move to dollars and cents and word problems. Building from coins to change keeps each step concrete and useful.

Money work usually runs from Grade 1 to Grade 5. Younger children recognise coins and find simple totals, while making change, working with dollars and cents, and solving money word problems build up through the middle grades as addition and subtraction become fluent.

Teach counting up from the price to the amount paid, rather than subtracting. For a $7 item paid with $10, count '8, 9, 10', so the change is $3. Counting on with real or play coins keeps it concrete and avoids the borrowing errors that pure subtraction can cause.

A frequent problem is confusing a coin's value with its size, since a small coin can be worth more than a big one. Errors also creep in when counting up to make change, and children often forget the decimal point in dollars and cents. Learning coin values by heart first helps.

Sort the coins from highest value to lowest, then count on from the largest, adding each smaller coin in turn. Grouping coins that make a round number, such as two 50-cent coins making a dollar, keeps the running total tidy and reduces mistakes.

Money is the everyday model for decimals. A dollar splits into 100 cents, so cents are hundredths of a dollar, and $3.45 means 3 dollars, 4 tenths and 5 hundredths. Working with dollars and cents gives children a concrete, familiar way into decimal place value.

After recognising coins and finding totals, children move on to making change, then to dollars and cents with a decimal point, and then to multi-step money word problems. Money work also supports decimals and everyday problem solving, so it stays useful well beyond early primary.