It Costs…

Hello Panda Pal! Today we’ll be doing a Kindergarten Math activity called, "It costs.”

Materials: Print out and cut out the Panda Pennies.

Instructions: Tell your child that today you are going to pretend to be at the make-believe store, where they can spend their Panda Pennies. Your child will tell you what they want to buy–this could be anything (a cat, a spaceship), OR it could be something in their immediate surrounding (a pen, the TV remote). You will tell them a cost (start with amounts ten cents or less).

This is how the conversation could go:

Child: I want to buy (item–either said aloud or showed to you)

Grown-up: OK, that will be (cost)

Child will count out the amount of pennies and hand it to you

What is my child learning?

In this activity, kindergarten students are focused on their math skills as it relates to counting and cardinality. Kindergarteners will count the number of Panda Pennies by ones. Cardinality is the recognition that the last number in a counting sequence represents how many there are. In this activity, after students count to a specified number with the pennies as manipulatives, they must recognize the last number they said as the total number of pennies.

Let us know what you think.

Share Dancing Panda with your friends.

Need some help doing this activity?

Tips:

Start by listing the cost as a number of pennies (“that will cost 3 pennies”) and then move to using the word “cents” (“that will cost 3 cents”)
Don’t worry about if the cost is unreasonable. Children can’t buy a spaceship for 8 cents, but in this game they can!
Try flipping the roles. The adult can say what they want to buy, the child can create the price, and then the child can double check that the adult paid the right amount.

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