I remember when my daughter got her first play kitchen.  She spent hours serving me plastic food on tiny princess plates.  She thought she was just having fun, but I knew her pretend play was helping her develop language and social skills.

Kids learn best when they are engaged and having fun.  Pretend play is the perfect opportunity to help your child develop and strengthen money skills.  

(Related Post: Measuring Volume: Hands-On Math Activity)

This math activity is simple to set up and uses materials you already have on hand.  Plus, kids love to play store!

Teaching Money Skills with Pretend Play

To set up the activity, first gather the items you will place in your “store.”  We used items from our play kitchen and some of our pretend tools, too.

You can gather the items yourself, but allowing your child to select the items will give them more ownership of the activity.  They may choose small plastic animals, action figures, or even items from your pantry.  Part of the fun is seeing what they come up with.

Next, give each item a price.  I used Post-It Notes to do this.  You could also write prices on masking tape or use tape to attach small squares of paper with the prices written on them.

You can use pretend money for this activity, or raid the piggy bank and use real coins like we did. (I love this play money set because it’s so realistic.)

Modify this money skills activity to fit your child’s needs.   

For younger children you might want all the prices to be a multiple of 10.  This way your child can work on counting by 10’s and use dimes to make their purchases.  If your child is working on counting by 5’s, write prices they can pay with nickels.

For older children you can write larger prices and encourage them to use a variety of coins to purchase the items.  This is great if they are just learning to count out quarters.

(Related Post:  Teach Counting Skills with Pennies)

How you play will depend on your child’s age and how comfortable they are with counting money.

If you’re just starting out, have your child go shopping.  Once they pick the items they want to buy, let them count out the coins they owe you.   Not only will they be learning how to count their money, but they will also be learning to make decisions.  If they don’t have enough money to buy all the items they selected, they will need to decide which ones they really want.

Next, you might want to try letting them be the store owner.  Go shopping and give them your payment.  Have them check to see if you gave them the right amount.  Is it too little?  How much do you still owe?  Is it too much?  You can use the opportunity to show them how to count back change.

You might even have them write up a receipt for your purchases.  We worked on adding several amounts of money together, being careful to keep the decimal points lined up.  Once the kids told me what I owed, I had them write out the subtraction problem to figure out the change they owed me.

You can enrich this pretend play activity even further by adding art to it.  Ask your child to create a name for the store and design a store ad.

Playing store is such an important way for kids to work on real-life money skills.  With very little set up they can work on counting money, adding monetary amounts, and giving change, all skills they need to know.

You may also like these math activity posts:

• Nerf Gun Math Fact Practice  — They’ll love practicing math facts this way.  
• Free Printable Addition Facts Bingo — Everyone loves Bingo!
• Math Fact Races  — Great for kinesthetic learners.
• Homemade Base 10 Manipulatives  — Perfect for helping kids understand double digit addition and subtraction.

The post Using Pretend Play to Teach Money Skills first appeared on There's Just One Mommy.

The 100th Day of School is a big deal in many elementary schools.  Not only is it a celebration, but it’s a fantastic time to work on counting skills for younger children and can inspire lots of creative learning fun for older students, too.  We love doing fun 100th day of school activities to celebrate in homeschool, too.

100th Day of School Activities

Start off your celebration by reading one of these fun books.

Break up the day with some of these fun ways to get kids up and moving.

• Do 100 jumping jacks.
• Go outside and take 100 giant steps and see where you wind up.
• Have a race to see who can run 100 feet the fastest.
• Time how long it take to do 100 sit-ups, push-ups, or another exercise.
• Pair up and toss a ball back and forth 100 times.

100th Day of School Math Activities

• Try the classic 100th Day of School Activity.  Collect 100 of one type of object and place it in a plastic bag.  Compare it to other collections of 100.  (Buttons, pennies, beads, paper clips and pieces of dried cereal are great for this activity.)
• Use the collections to practice counting to 100.  This is great for one-to-one correspondence.
• Work on skip counting by counting to 100 by 2’s, 5’s, and 10’s.
• Estimate how far 100 inches (or centimeters) is.  Mark your guess with tape and then use a tape measure to see how close you were.
• Bring the tape measure outside and see how far 100 feet is.  (or 100 meters)
• Work on volume and estimate how full a glass will be with 100 pieces of cereal.  Use a dry-erase marker to draw a line showing how full you think it will be and then count out 100 pieces of cereal to check your estimate.
• What about 100 chocolate chips, raisins, or cheese crackers?  Estimate which one will fill the glass up more and then count out 100 of each to see if you are right.
• What about 100 drops of water?  Estimate how far up it will fill your glass and mark it with a dry-erase marker.  Then get an eye-dropper and count out 100 drops of colored water.
• Use a scale to determine how much 100 pennies weigh.
• Use number cards to put the numbers 1-100 in order.
• Estimate how tall a tower of 100 Lego blocks would be.  Then build it.  (You may need to actually lay the tower down and measure how long it is.)
• Make a chain of 100 paper clips.
• Make tally marks while counting to 100.
• Flip a coin 100 times and write down how many times it lands on heads and tails.
• Figure out what year it will be when you turn 100.
• Use a 100 chart and count out 100 snacks.  (dry cereal, cheese crackers, raisins, and small candies work great for this.)

Crafts and STEM Activities for the 100th Day of School

• Make a treat necklace that is perfect for celebrating 100 days of school.  Just string 100 pieces of circular cereal onto a piece of yarn, tie the ends together and you have a necklace you can snack on.
• Make a 100 days headband.  Just use strips of paper taped together to form a snug fitting headband for your child.   Have them decorate it with the number 100 and whatever other decorations they see fit.  (Maybe they want to put 100 stickers on it, or they could draw 100 circles, or just the number 100 over and over.
• Count out 100 small stickers to decorate a page.
• Create a collage of 100 thumbprints.
• Make 100 cards to send to a nursing home.
• Use a cotton swab and make a picture with 100 painted dots.
• Make a colorful necklace by stringing 100 beads.
• Write 100 on a large sheet of paper.  Now create a drawing by turning that 100 into something.  Will it become a pair of glasses?  A school bus?
• Draw a picture of what you think you will look like when you are 100 years old.
• Design a collage picture using 100 small squares of paper.
• Or, make a collage using 100 pictures from old magazines.
• Make a paper chain with 100 links.
• Use 100 toothpicks to make a marshmallow and toothpick structure.
• Create something with 100 wood blocks.
• Build a new Lego creation with 100 Lego bricks.
• Build something with 100 plastic cups.

100th Day of School Writing Prompts

• Write about what you think life will be like when you are 100.
• Write about something you wish you could have 100 of.
• Write about what you would do if you had $100.
• Write a story using exactly 100 words.
• Make a chart with how you would say 100 in other languages.
• Create a list of 100 acts of kindness you can do throughout the year.
• Write a poem for the number 100.
• Make a list of 100 words you know how to read. (Great for early readers)
• Make a list of 100 things you’ve learned.
• Create a list of 100 things you’d like to do one day.
• Research what life was like 100 years ago and write a report about how life is different now.
• Come up with a list of 100 reasons your school (homeschool) is the best.

Ready to celebrate the big day?  From books and math activities to crafts and writing prompts, there are so many fun 100th Day of School activities to choose from.

You may also like:

• 100 Free Printables for the 100th Day of School from B-Inspired Mama
• Learning Ideas with 100 Chart from Teach Beside Me
• Skip Counting with Bottle Caps
• ABC’s & 123’S — 40+ Hands-On Activities to Work on Letter and Number Skills

The post 50 Fun Activities for the 100th Day of School first appeared on There's Just One Mommy.