Coins/Currency Work - Denominations up to 10 cents

I've been looking for a montessori way to get D to understand and work with making change up to 10 cents. She was familiar with the value of the various coins, i.e., penny = 1 cent, nickel = 5 cents, dime = 10 cents. We practiced enough with sorting and also through our poem. The next step was to make her visualize the various coins and their values up to 10 (Courtesy RightStart Math, but more on that in another post). So here is tray I put together for D. We did these trays over a series of a few days, but in sequence. Small, incremental steps leading to the big concept the montessori way.

This tray contains 55 pennies and 55 craft sticks to be used as tally sticks. D is already familiar with the tally stick counting, so this was an activity to relate the pennies with their values. Here is how the layout would look after the work is done.

I've taught D to visualize numbers 5 through 10, as 5, 5 + 1 .. 5 + 5 (RightStart Concept). So using the tally sticks as guide, she can quantify 5 though 10 cents as nickel, nickel + 1 penny .. nickel + 5 pennies. I added another bowl with 8 nickels and 15 pennies and one dime. This is how the work looks after it is completed.

Another few variations I might put out later is to associate these quantities to number rods and bead stairs, and eventually moving on to teen and ten boards and work her way to a dollar, you get the picture!