Counting Coins: First Steps with Small Handfuls

Four purses are printed on this Grade 1 page, and each one holds only two or three coins. The coins come from the three smallest kinds — pennies, nickels and dimes — so no quarter appears anywhere on the sheet. The child counts what is in each purse and writes the total in cents in the box beside it. Four purses, four totals, and never more than three coins to keep track of at a time.

A first money page should be about the coins themselves, not about the counting. Before a child can add money at all, they have to know that this small silver disc is worth five while the slightly smaller one beside it is worth ten — a genuinely strange idea, since size and value openly disagree, and one that plenty of first graders quietly get wrong for months. Holding each handful to three coins leaves attention free for exactly that recognition work, and the missing quarter is deliberate too, because twenty-five is the value that turns simple counting into a real chain.

Print the PDF free, and if you have real coins nearby, lay them straight onto the pictures as you go. Counting pennies and nickels narrows the job even further to two coin kinds, while counting money with all the coins brings the quarter in as soon as the child is ready for it.