Shopping Math: Count the Coins, Then Work Out the Change

The money paid is drawn on the card. Both stories on this 2nd grade money worksheet show two teal circles marked 25 sitting inside the sentence, so the child counts the coins to fifty before anything else happens. The shelf above holds five animals with tags reading 40¢, 20¢, 35¢, 30¢ and 45¢. Mia pays for one animal with those two coins and the card asks how much money she gets back; Leo does the same with another and the card asks for his change. Each has a dot grid and a dashed answer box marked ¢.

Change is the money question children find hardest, because the story runs forwards and the arithmetic runs backwards. Two things have to be sorted out in order: what was handed over, which the drawn coins make countable rather than assumed, and what it cost, which the shelf supplies. Only then does the subtraction appear. Most second graders solve it by counting up from the price to the fifty rather than taking one number from the other, and that method is worth encouraging on the dot grid, because it is the method a shopkeeper uses and it survives into larger amounts.

Print the PDF free and put two real quarters on the desk beside the page; the drawn coins are clear but handling them makes the fifty concrete. Ask for the price and the amount paid to be written down before the change is worked out, so a wrong answer can be traced to the right step. Is there enough money is the companion comparison page, and add up the basket is where totals are practiced alone. Counting coins is the page to use first if a child cannot yet read two quarters as fifty cents.