I can’t remember where the idea came from, but it was during my early homeschooling years that a friend told me about the concept, which I used with my first grade daughter and her siblings through the years. When we worked on math problems specifically, I would give her a penny for each correct answer. At the end of the week, we spent time making trades for coins of greater value. Eventually, the trading included paper money as well. The experience of handling money and working a little bit at a time with the trading allowed my children to know in practice what it meant to handle money. When their earnings accrued enough to buy a treat, that commercial transaction would also expand their engagement in handling money.

We later lived in Mexico, where the kids had the opportunity to handle a different currency, the peso. Again, opportunities to earn and spend allowed the kids to become familiar with money from a mathematical standpoint. One of the more disconcerting stories was the toy cash register that had a slider for an ATM card. When my bank card went missing, it was a bit of a nightmare, commercial lesson learned by the parents. Nevertheless, the kids engaged in handling small amounts of money in everyday life.

Today, it’s easy to jump to gift cards, whether store specific or the credit card variety. I think that we can lose sight of the value of handling coins, making change, and saving in little ways. In looking back, my oldest daughter especially remembers those penny math moments and their impact. She is now an elementary school teacher and has worked in similar fashion with students on money handling.

As a parent, I think that experiencing math in real life can be one of the greatest investments we can make in our kiddos as far as preparing them for future math courses. That doesn’t mean that they will be math whizzes, of course, and some of my kids have definitely struggled with areas such as Algebra. However, approaching math from avenues found in day to day life enables our kiddos to understand that math is integral. It doesn’t have to be the subject they love most, but it doesn’t have to be terrifying either. Look for the little ways that you can work counting, sorting, and exchanging into everyday life to promote a mathematical mindset that can be carried into the classroom in the future.