Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse

In math right now, we are doing a unit on money.

We read the book Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse by Kevin Henkes

 

In the story, Lilly carries around three quarters.  Each time I read about the quarters, I would pause and ask how much?  And my kids would shout out 75 cents! (If they didn't know how much 3 quarters was worth before, they sure do now!)

When we finished the story, we made our own purple purses, or leather wallets because we do have some little men in the class who wouldn't go near the color purple, let alone a purse.

We folded a piece of construction paper in almost half, leaving about an inch or two at the top to fold over to make the top of the purse.  The kids decorated their purses.

The math came in when they had to choose their own amount of money to put in.  After putting their secret amount of coins in, they wrote the amount on the back of the purse.

Then I had them mix up and find a purse that wasn't their own.  They had time to count out the coins before I would have them flip the purse to check if they were correct.

After our whole group activity, I stuck the purses in a center bucket where they could continue to practice.

♥Stephanie