Why I Think of Math as Coins

Weird title for the blog post but I am running on empty and could not think of a better way to put it!

My brother had a paper route when I was just a little one. He is eight years older than I am and I always wanted to hang around with him. I was about four or five when he was starting with his route. I guess I was a pest because, to keep me busy, he would have me stack his coins from his route into one dollar piles. As a four or five year old, before any "formal" math lessons, I learned that there were 10 dimes or 4 quarters or 20 nickels to make up one dollar. My brother knew that I could count at least up to 20 and so I could help him out by stacking up coins into dollar piles. As we both got a little older, and he started with both local papers as a paperboy, my duties increased to making the coin piles for the paper coin wrappers. Now, I was counting out 40 quarters for 10 dollars, 50 dimes for five dollars and 40 nickels for 2 dollars. My fingers were still too small to get the coins into the wrappers but I was accurate and fast with the sorting and counting.

This "lesson" in math has stayed with me to this day! I think in terms of money when thinking out math problems. I can actually SEE the quarters etc. when I am figuring out something with math. Weird.

This is one way to naturally teach your child math. Math is not numbers, it is patterns and relationships! Once a child "gets" the pattern and the relationship, he will be able to understand the math concepts.