Counting Pennies

Ryan loves his "piggy bank." It's not a true piggy bank, but rather big, plastic container from Costco that used to hold cashews. One of the things he enjoys is counting his money. So I decided to combine his love of money counting with the Math U See blocks. This year he's been learning about units, tens, and hundreds. So I had Ryan pile up his pennies in piles of ten. I reinforced the concept that only nine occupants in any of the "houses" (units, tens, hundreds) and once the house reached ten, it transformed from a unit place to a tens place. After we finished the pennies, we worked on the dimes to create the hundreds place.