telling time and using money help needed

[kittie313]

My oldest dd is an organic learner I think. She's a perfectionist and tends to work on her own with stuff that she has trouble with until she gets it down. She taught herself to walk 100% on her own, practicing in her crib at naptimes and after bedtime every day until she was confident with it and she stood up at 8mo in my living room and took off across the room before Christmas LOL We discovered TODAY that she has been working on her reading. She admitted to sneaking books into her bedroom closet and then getting up after everyone's asleep and reading in the closet quietly after I asked her about her reading when she read labels on boxes and bottles in a catroon on Disney (come on, we don't have rubber cement in this house, she HAD to know how to read it). And yes, her doing this has pretty much guaranteed that I'm going to be putting a small basket with books for her on the shelf in her closet so she can read whenever she wants to without sneaking around, and I'll rotate them with new ones as she expresses a desire for new ones (letting her pick at the library and bookstore of course).

Anyway, I want to embrace her self-teaching this summer to help her with telling time and working with money. I need ideas on how to do this and what to do. She wants to learn these skills, but I don't have really anything that she can work on this with. So, what can I give her to help her with these things? I have a couple Kumon workbooks that she works in once in a while for learning basics of time what each coin is worth, but I'd like to give her more that she can use to work on this stuff better. What do you suggest for the motivated learner who is interested in this particular area? I don't want her to sneak around with learning, but I want to let her do it on her own terms and know that she can come to us to ask for stuff if she wants to learn something so she can do it her way on top of our regular charter school curriculum. I don't want to hold her back at all if she's interested in learning something or working more on a skill she struggles with.

[pinky]

We bought my dd a watch for Christmas when she was (I think) 7. Almost overnight she learned how to tell time. Much better than any manipulatives or worksheets we used to "learn" it!

[kittie313]

OK great, I can get her a watch. We want her to learn to read a real clock and a digital both, which should we start with for her on a watch? What about with money? Would it be good to just get her a play money set and then print and laminate a chart that shows the value of each coin and how many pennies make a nickel and such then just let her play with it when she wants to practice? Or is there a better way to handle money for her? We can't really go and get real money for her to mess with but have no issues with a set of play money and maybe some charts or a homemade book with different price amounts to practice............. would something like that work well for money?

[joy_seeker]

My kids learned about money by having and using money. I used to save my change for them and let them get candy or small toys (under $1) when we went to the store and they'd check out seperately. I'd help , counting out the change as they paid and the change they received. We also had a change jar at home they loved to play with.

As for time digital time comes pretty naturally, standard clocks can be hard to come by so we just got one that we liked to keep in the living room and referred to it.

With both time and money the real thing is so prominent in our daily lives that the need for artificial just never seemed necessary to me.

[kittie313]

See, for us money is something we actually have to teach because we don't use cash. We keep track of how much we have in our accounts and use our debit cards for everything. If we actually used cash it wouldn't be an issue really, but I can pretty honestly tell you that I can count on one hand the number of times my kids have actually handled physical money.

[womenswisdom]

Would you consider giving her a cash "allowance" of some kind that she can save or spend as she decides (and you discuss with her)? It will probably "mean" more to her if it's her money to do with as she wants. She'll want to know things like what that amount of money will buy, what happens if the item costs less than what she pays with (change), etc.

[moominmamma]

My kids use a ledger system for their allowances and it's been wonderful. I figure this is how most transactions are handled in the real world these days so it's important that unlike my generation they don't grow up thinking that bills and coins are "real money" cashless transactions don't really count. There are lots of great things about the ledger system: the ability of the kids to track their spending and savings habits over time, the fact that money can't be lost or pilfered into or out of a piggy bank, on-line purchases or little impulse purchases at the grocery store can just be paid for with mom's card and debited from the account and the kids don't have to remember to bring a coin pouch with them, and the fact that if parents forget to give allowance for a while it's always easy to see what's owing.

I second the recommendation to give your child a watch. Like others I always figured digital time was basic and ubiquitous while analog clocks are trickier to figure out. One of my kids made a clock for her bedroom and had great fun with that -- not only the collage and painting to decorate it, but playing with the setting function on the inexpensive clockwork, watching how the hour hand moves gradually as the minute-hand cycles. Any craft-store clockwork and a shoebox, paints and collage materials would work.

Miranda

[mommy2maya]

How old is the child? My 4yo taught herself how to read the digital clocks first- the analog are still a bit tricky for her, mostly because we don't even own one in our home, lol. She also have a pretty firm grip on money as well, from filching our change from the change bowl, lol. She knows that four quarters make a dollar, and can identify all of the coins and bills. All just by watching and doing.

[sapphire_chan]

For money, I'd just designate all coins as "hers". When she gets a lot of coins you can offer to exchange them for bills for her so she has less bulk to deal with, but she'll be able to do stuff like buy a couple bananas at the store for herself quite soon.

Hang on, she's 7. Nvm, go with the ledger system for her and your 6yo, and give the coins to your 4yo.

[SundayCrepes]

I got my son this cash register at a thrift store: http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Resou...7099776&sr=8-2

It has various math games on it but he is still to young to play them so I don't really know much about the games. It will tally up the total of the prices entered then ask if it's cash or charge.

I see some of the reviews say their cash registers didn't last long. Ours has been dropped a gazillion times and it still works fine.

[kittie313]

Yes, she's 7 and has some learning challenges. Money and time (well and place value) are pretty much the only struggles that she's having in our math curriculum, and she WANTS to figure the stuff out so that she doesn't have to ask us all the time. My H has been working with her using some punch-out coins that came in our curriculum to try and help her with the whole what they are worth and how to count them, and it just ain't happening. I've gotten so frustrated with trying to teach her the stuff that I gave up and told him to do it because I may bang my head on the wall if I have to keep trying (and I got brick walls inside my house too LOL). He's frustrated, I'm frustrated, and she's VERY frustrated because not only is she not getting it, but she knows that we're out of ideas to try and help her.

She already has a savings account, and she's so stingy with her money that she puts every penny in her account (she knows how to count dollars thankfully, and she knows that she needs $130 to buy the Nintendo DS that she wants, so she is busting her butt with extra chores to put toward it because she knows that we won't buy her one straight up, ok if she doesn't have it saved by Christmas she is getting one but shhhh don't tell). She can read price tags pretty well, I'm constantly asking her to read the tags on low shelves at the store for me because I just don't bend that well sometimes. She gets the basic concept of money and knows that our debit cards only work if we have money in the account to cover what we're buying, but honestly she can't count change to save her life and that's what is getting us all messed up.

[mommy2maya]

counting up change is pretty difficult, I think that was covered in depth in second grade at my kids' school. Honestly I would just keep reinforcing and using every day examples instead of trying to hammer it in and frustrating the whole family. My just finished third grade dd can now count change in her head with any speed and accuracy.

[joy_seeker]

You might want to ask this question on the main homeschooling page. Here at the USing forum I think most of us are going to keep reiterating to use real money, give it time, don't push it, and let it happen naturally. If that's not what you're looking for you might want to ask others who are also using a curriculum what has worked for them.

ETA: I'm not saying you shouldn't have asked the question here or that it was wrong to do so by any means! Just that it seems like you may have reached a point of wanting some different advice than you may find here. Just wanted to be clear about that.

[SundayCrepes]

Originally Posted by SundayCrepes

I got my son this cash register at a thrift store: http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Resou...7099776&sr=8-2

This cash register I mentioned before has a coin slot that says the name of the coin when you put it in the slot.

[kittie313]

Originally Posted by joy_seeker

You might want to ask this question on the main homeschooling page. Here at the USing forum I think most of us are going to keep reiterating to use real money, give it time, don't push it, and let it happen naturally. If that's not what you're looking for you might want to ask others who are also using a curriculum what has worked for them.

ETA: I'm not saying you shouldn't have asked the question here or that it was wrong to do so by any means! Just that it seems like you may have reached a point of wanting some different advice than you may find here. Just wanted to be clear about that.

I chose to ask here because I wanted the reality check if we're expecting too much of an upcoming second grader. Honestly, its more dh stressing over it than me because she's not able to make change and count a pile of coins, and he's worried that our charter school will come down on us if she's not even close to being there yet. I'm more to the unschooling spectrum when it comes to reinforcing lessons and such, I learned real fast that this particular child will learn something when she's good and ready, no matter how much we try to push her to do it, and that she'll do it HER way. I'm more interested in finding things I can do to encourage her since she's starting to show a desire to do this (and its perfect since I told our teacher that we were planning on going over time and money this summer, she has no clue that really I'm planning on just handing her a couple workbooks and letting her do whatever she wants as she's interested and letting her play around and figure it out on her own). I just want to be sure I've fully got what is being suggested, at times I can be a little slow to understand some things and taking a more organic approach to learning is hard for me to grasp at times although I have firsthand watched what happens when I just provide stuff for her to work with and figure it out on her own as she's interested. I need to be sure before I take it to dh that I've fully got a grasp on the ideas for more organic learning with her, he's very much into worksheets and drills and "school at home" like we do when it comes to our regular lessons (although I've been known to hand dd1 some manipulatives and a folder with all the practice sheets and assessments for a unit and letting her just work at it for a while to figure out on her own at her speed because its her way of doing things)

[moominmamma]

Originally Posted by kittie313

I chose to ask here because I wanted the reality check if we're expecting too much of an upcoming second grader.

The unschooling party line would be that to "expect" anything other than what naturally unfolds in a child-led fashion is to expect too much. I could tell you about plenty of unschooled kids who couldn't count change or tell time at age 7, 8 or 9. I'm pretty sure they all eventually learned. I could also tell you about unschooled kids who could do both these things at age 4. You just never know. Kids are all different.

If you're looking for reassurance that with a rich environment and a caring adult presence in her life your dd will eventually learn, this is a good place to ask. I think maybe that's part of what you were looking for. If you're looking for ideas that might help interest her in learning self-directedly, this is a good place to ask too. Maybe you got some of those.

On the other hand, I suspect the parents in Homeschooling would probably have a better handle on whether these skills are typically expected of rising first graders.

Miranda

[kittie313]

Originally Posted by moominmamma

The unschooling party line would be that to "expect" anything other than what naturally unfolds in a child-led fashion is to expect too much. I could tell you about plenty of unschooled kids who couldn't count change or tell time at age 7, 8 or 9. I'm pretty sure they all eventually learned. I could also tell you about unschooled kids who could do both these things at age 4. You just never know. Kids are all different.

If you're looking for reassurance that with a rich environment and a caring adult presence in her life your dd will eventually learn, this is a good place to ask. I think maybe that's part of what you were looking for. If you're looking for ideas that might help interest her in learning self-directedly, this is a good place to ask too. Maybe you got some of those.

On the other hand, I suspect the parents in Homeschooling would probably have a better handle on whether these skills are typically expected of rising first graders.

Miranda

OK I feel much better about her progress in this area. I'll just let it go her way and do the best we can to provide her with the stuff she needs to practice, and just let it come as it does. DH isn't too thrilled about it, he wants me to drill her daily, but I've been raising this kid for 7 years now and know that she doesn't just get it with drilling. She has to WANT to learn it before she will get it, and with her just starting to want to learn I have a feeling she'll click probably before it becomes an issue with the curriculum we use. And if worse comes to worse, I'll just fudge scores with that section like I did for 1st grade math, and just let her continue.

If we didn't need the structure of the charter school with me in college, we would sooooooo be not using them this upcoming fall. I was all set to just have stuff handy for them to learn and explore, and let it all progress at their paces before we discovered just how badly our days go right now without a lot of structure.

[dillonandmarasmom]

Both kids have wrist watches, and we purposefully have both types of clocks in our house. If the kids ask me when we are going to do something, I ask them to let me know the time and we count how much longer til we do whatever it is. That has been pretty helpful. Neither are truly "self-taught" when it comes to numbers and letters. We have had to find ways to facilitate this for them both.

For money, the kids like to dump out the giant change jar and sort and count the money. DS has been doing simple multiplication with quarters and dimes for a few years, and DD is not at all interested in doing so. She prefers to look at how shiny they are! I sometimes ask them to count out change for a slush if they want one for the park. They know how much they need and count and carry it.

[mimaja]

For the money topic, try playing Monopoly! I was going to start a theard about that last week, but I was having trouble with my computer. Anyway, we taught our 6yo son to play and in less than 2 hours he had mastered the concepts of buying and selling, place values, and mortgaging. He also got to practise adding in his head (the amounts on the dice) and addign larger numbers (the monetary values).

You could even replace the fake paper money with real bills and/or coins.

Kristine

[LoMaH]

I agree about getting her a wristwatch and letting her count real coins.

More Ideas:
She'll need to learn to skip count for both (counting by 1s, 2s, 5s, 10s, and 25s.)
You might want to google "skip count" for ideas on how to incorporate (hopscotch, jumprope, songs, charts, etc.)

I'm not a big fan of flashcards, but my kids enjoyed learning to count coins with some cheap dollar store money flashcards that have the coins on one side of the card and the amount in the back.
Ditto a cash register (playing store).
Let her count real coins, starting with groups of single coins (all pennies, all nickels, etc.) then work up to groups of 2 coins, then 3, etc.

You can help her make a paper plate clock (write in the hours and minutes, include moveable hands) for her to manipulate.
,
Post up small homemade analog paper clocks depicting the times you typically do certain activities (wake up, eat lunch, go to the library).

Of course, reinforce whenever possible by pointing out the time to her and having her help you count coins (toothfairy, shopping trips, piggy bank, etc.)

ETA: Oh, don't forget to include children's math literature if possible.
ex- The Grouchy Ladybug (Eric Carle) for learning to tell time by the hour.
Perhaps your librarian can offer more suggestions.
http://www.livingmath.net/ReaderList...S/Default.aspx