Last Updated on October 23, 2023 by Editorial Team
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Are there any manipulatives for teaching about money to young learners? If you are asking this question, you certainly have dealt with the discomfort of dealing with money or have a child going through a similar condition. The answer is, thankfully, Yes!
Why use manipulatives to teach about money to early learners?
Coins and currencies attract everyone from an early age. The very first introduction to money happens when the children get a gift from the piggy bank and filling it to the brim becomes one of their fondest dreams. It would not be an understatement if we call the piggy bank the very first tool that kids get, which helps them learn about money. Manipulatives further extend this idea of learning about money in a more learning-driven manner. These are helpful because:
1. Not all kids are comfortable with the idea of counting and dealing with currency. This inability to keep up with the money matters, budgeting, and paying for buying things is a sign of dyscalculia that remains ingrained all life in people having this disorder. Manipulatives help have an alternative method of learning about money matters in an activity-oriented manner.
2. With changing times and better awareness about the learning needs of dyscalculic children, educators have realized the need for fun teaching methods like using manipulatives to help children master money and related affairs.
3. Manipulatives can be used for role-playing activities[1] that can help children build confidence in making payments in real-life situations.
4. Manipulatives offer a fun-filled way of teaching money and removing their hesitation or fear about the same. A complex topic like budgeting can also be taught in a deeply engaging and practical manner using these manipulatives.
All these reasons show that manipulatives boost the learning of money-based concepts in a practical manner and help children grow up to become confident dealers in financial matters. Let’s take a look at the most engaging manipulatives that can teach children about money and matters like counting coins and currency, exchanging money for goods planning expenditures, etc.
Best manipulatives for teaching money and related matters to early learners
1. Learning Resources Pretend And Play Money Set
Pretend & Play Play Money from Learning Resources is the finest introduction to coins and bills. This manipulative for teaching money matters is useful as an activity set. Children can learn about various denominations of coins and bills prevalent in the present economy. With the help of role-playing and competitive activities, this activity set is helpful in teaching counting, bills, and coins identification and doing basic math like addition.
By giving a first-hand introduction to coins and currency bills, teachers and parents can reduce the hesitation in children towards dealing with money matters to a great extent. Further, these fake currency bills and coins can be used to teach basic math like addition, subtraction, etc. These basic math operations teach better about how to shop and calculate expenses made, and the amount they will get as change after making any payment.
2. Melissa and Doug Play Money Set
Plastic coins and familiar-looking currency notes are provided with a wooden drawer arrangement in this manipulative. There are about 50 pieces of each denomination making it easy for the children to learn as many combinations as possible. The unique thing about this manipulative is that by way of categorizing, it helps master number recognition and identification.
Parents or teachers can ask children to classify the coins and bills and place them in the slots assigned to each denomination. This is how the children may develop comfort with currency handling and become smart shoppers in times to follow.
3.Hand2mind Fake Money Coins
Handling money gets even more exciting if kids are provided with manipulatives that actually look like real money. So, get your hands on this play money set, which includes 96 coins, including pennies, dimes, nickels, quarters, etc. It is great for kids in regular classrooms and those with specific counting money and budgeting IEP goals. These fake coins are made of sturdy plastic and have the exact same dimensions as real money.
Use these in your classroom to make money-related activities fun and enjoyable. Kids can learn how to count money using these fake coins. You can teach them about saving money by allowing them to put some in their piggy banks and learn basic operations like addition and subtraction. Overall, this assorted coin set is great for teaching financial literacy to school-going or homeschooled kids.
4. Pretend to Spend Wallet
Children have a tendency to imitate elders. They are quite intrigued by the way the father takes out the wallet from his pocket and pays for anything they demand. This money wallet manipulative allows children to step into the shoes of elders and pretend to pay. This wallet does not carry coins and bills only. It also has various forms of plastic money like gift cards and bank cards which have become an indispensable part of the present world baking system.
The biggest advantage this manipulative offers is the ease of teaching kids to organize the money in their wallets and be systematic in dealing with money. So, you are quite likely to groom an early learner about being careful with money through role-playing using this manipulative.
5. Educational Insights Big Money
Big Money is a very useful manipulative, especially for teachers, as it makes the teaching process a whole lot easier. Just one set is all you need to explain monetary concepts to little kids. The magnetic coins and bills are big enough for kids to see from a distance and easily stick to a dry-erase board for effective teaching.
The set includes a variety of bills and coins that kids can manipulate to learn and practice simple money skills like making changes or adding and subtracting money. Even parents can invest in this set and stick the bills and coins on the fridge so kids can get familiar with their local currency and practice easy transactions at home.
6. Playkidz Interactive Toy Cash Register for Kids
Why would any child be required to learn about money? Well, obviously to become an independent shopper while growing up, isn’t it? That is why this interactive toy register is designed to give a realistic experience of what to expect at the billing counter of a shop. Kids are given dummy products to buy or sell with the price mentioned on those.
The simple act of inputting prices, calculating the total due, and giving change to the customer takes learning to another level. This activity set cum toy, with its interactive design, offers multiple benefits such as – ease of understanding the sound of numbers, flexibility with following instructions, doing operations like adding the amounts and finding the total bill, etc. Thus, not only about money, but this manipulative does teach many things about shopping too.
7. Monopoly Ultimate Banking Game
Another very important reason for learning money is to understand how banks and businesses work. Modern banking and transaction systems largely depend not on bills and currencies but on cashless ways. Monopoly is a game that familiarizes kids with cashless ways of transacting properties and dealing with banks.
If not fully devoted to teaching coins and currency bills, this game is still a good learning resource as it introduces kids to using cards. Also, the game requires the kids to make decisions like property buying, selling, putting the property on auction, taking loans from banks, and others. So, this game offers complete know-how on money dealing that happens in the adult world to early learners.
8. Learning Resources Teaching ATM Bank
Modern-time money knowledge is incomplete without learning about ATMs. Kids are always curious about this magical machine and this manipulative brings that intriguing money-dispensing tool right to their hands.
Kids can learn to punch the amount, know how to use debit cards in an ATM machine, and collect and count money after it is dispensed. So, do include this ATM machine in your teaching methods when you want to teach money concepts to children using manipulatives.
To conclude,
Money is the basic thing that every child needs to learn about. Giving them pocket money or piggy banks has been a strategic way of making kids responsible and learning about finances for ages. This simple activity can be made more systematic and planned by the use of manipulatives that boost abstract thinking as we use it in real life and promote strategical ways[2] of boosting money concepts among young learners.
References
- Hidayah, Isti & Sugiarto, & Dwijanto, Dwijanto. (2016). The role of manipulatives usage in mathematics learning of primary education with a scientific approach towards the students’ thinking ability. 14. 7219-7232.
- McBryde, Joan Horton, “Assisting the learning disabled through the use of math manipulatives” (1993).
Theses Digitization Project. 670. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/670
Manpreet Singh
An engineer, Maths expert, Online Tutor and animal rights activist. In more than 5+ years of my online teaching experience, I closely worked with many students struggling with dyscalculia and dyslexia. With the years passing, I learned that not much effort being put into the awareness of this learning disorder. Students with dyscalculia often misunderstood for having just a simple math fear. This is still an underresearched and understudied subject. I am also the founder ofSmartynote -‘The notepad app for dyslexia’,
