Free Printable Coins and Play Money for Math Lessons

I maintain several free education and lesson plans blogs. One of the most frequently requested materials from blog users is "free printable money". Teachers use play money, coins and bills in a variety of math lessons. Here are free printable coins, bills and play money. Homeschoolers will want to use these free printable coins, bills and play money for lessons also.

Printable Play Money (click here) has just about every denomination and style of printable play money you might ever need for your lessons. There are cut out coin worksheets, counting coins activities and making change lessons. There are free printable sheets of pennies, dimes, nickels and quarters to cut out and use for counting and making change.

Printable bills (click here) Use this link for free printable bills and US currency in several denominations. Print play one dollar, five dollar, ten dollar, twenty dollar, fifty dollar and one hundred dollar bills. Some styles are replicas of US mint currency and some are obviously play money.

How can you use free printable play money in your classroom or homeschool? First, print several sheets of various coins and bill denominations. Print on card stock or laminate the play money printables. Cut out play money and coins or assign students to perform cutting task. Preschool, younger elementary and special needs students often need practice in fine motor and scissor skills. Provide each student with a play wallet (folded from construction paper), envelope or zipper bag to store her coins and play money. Students should keep play money "wallets" in their desks.

Whenever you teach a math or money lesson, students should use their play money as hands-on manipulatives. There are several ways to incorporate interactive play money in lessons. When you are doing a math or money problem at the board, students can demonstrate their answer using their money. If you are working on making change, counting coins, skip counting (by five or ten), place value, story problems, adding or subtracting with regrouping (also called "carrying" and "borrowing") students can use their play money wallets to show their computations.

Children love to use their play money in math and shopping simulation. If you teach using learning centers, set up a grocery store or retail store in your Practical Life Area. Children love to pretend shop, buying and selling with their play money. This reinforces money math, mental math, communication and story problems skills. Grocery Store and marketing play exercises those Bloom's Taxonomy and HOTS (Higher Order Thinking Skills) of analysis, application, synthesis and evaluation, too.

For more lesson materials, visit me at the blogs listed in the links field.