Coin Rubbing Money Tree

Coin Rubbing Money Tree - A Hands-on Money Activity

This is a fun way to explore coins in a hands-on way. My kids love anything to do with money: counting money, playing with money, experiments with money, and so on! This is a great way to reinforce coin size, as well as coin recognition as the patterns are rubbed through with crayon. This is LOW prep and can be done whenever you want to introduce, practice, or review coins.

What you need:

• coins (if you have any foreign or unusual coins, this makes it even more fun!)
• crayons, without their wrapping
• a bare tree. Paint or draw one yourself, or print out the image below (click to view larger):

For a challenge, have your child add up how much their money tree is worth, or see how many of the state quarters they can identify:

Some of the state quarters make really nice rubbings!

 
Looking for more Money activities? Learning is so much more fun when you use games, so I have created several games and activities to actively engage students in money:

 
More money activities:

Fishing for money at an indoor carnival

Pin this idea for later:

april fools' day freebie

I put together a short April Fools' Day freebie to share with your students (or children, if you homeschool). Enjoy!

Exploring pointillism: rainbows

Exploring Pointillism - Simple Art for Kids

We have been doing some of the wonderful crafts over at The Crafty Classroom. Most recently, we tried out pointillism! I printed out these line drawing rainbows since St. Patrick's day is rapidly approaching. If you are learning about Georges Seurat, this is another great time to try out this fun art project!

What you need:

• pencils with new erasers
• paint
• rainbow line drawing (or choose another if you prefer) 
• scissors and colored paper (optional)

Leave it as is or cut out the rainbow and mount it on another piece of paper. You could also add a pot of gold - shiny gold stickers are great for that (circles or stars)! These are sure to cheer up any room.

What if my kid HATES to use paint? 

Oh I hear this loud and clear! We actually revisited this project when my kids were older and this was a big problem. What did I do? I made it more relatable for him. I knew he wouldn't be interested in making dots on a rainbow, tree, or something simple. Instead, I found a blank map of the United States to print and told him to choose 10 states to fill in, but instead of using paint, I had him use ink/stamp pads. You get much the same effect but don't have as much mess to deal with.

Templates to Print for a Pointillism Project

You probably want to keep it pretty simple, especially for younger children. Printable templates you may want to try:

the rainbow shown

or head to the link to find more options, like some with pots of gold

planet Earth

Minecraft coloring pages 

a beach ball

tree coloring pages

suncatchers via the artful parent

We recently tried out this easy activity after I saw is posted by Jean over at The Artful Parent. I already had beads (from Dollar Tree). I took the advice from the comments and cooked these outside on the grill. No outgassing in the house was a huge bonus!

One of the finished suncatchers.

We used mixed opaque and translucent beads.

H placing his beads into the muffin tray.

Grill ready to go!

Rainbow suncatcher!

Suncatchers!

just another ma(g)n(et)ic monday

 

 We love our Tegu blocks!What fun.

This is one of the sets we have.    The kids combined it with this awesome magnet set:

number line game

Free download: Out of This World number line games. Great for practicing math and subtraction facts. Download from my Teachers Pay Teachers store (free to register an account there if you don't have one):

 

Out of This World Number Line Game

Here's a glimpse of what one of the included games looks like:

One of the game boards.

Some of the playing pieces.

Enjoy!

You can also download directly here.