Penny Jar: Estimating for Charity

Add to list Go to activity
Learners will collect pennies to donate and will combine charitable giving with estimating and calculating with money. To start choose a charity or something to save up for together. Show learners a clear plastic jar in which you’ll collect coins and make some predictions: How many pennies will the jar hold? What’s that in dollars? How full will the jar be in a week? How much money do you think that will be? Collect every day until the jar is full, then, everyone gets counting! [Activity is publicly available through a web crawler capture on Archive.org.]

Quick Guide

Preparation Time:
Under 5 minutes
Learning Time:
10 to 30 minutes
Estimated Materials Cost:
1 cent - $1 per group of students
Age Range:
Ages 4 - 14
Resource Type:
Activity
Language:
English

Materials List (per group of students)

  • jar for pennies
  • paper and pencils
  • calculators (optional)

Keywords

Subjects

  • Mathematics
    • Number and Operations
      • Decimals
      • Number Systems
  • The Nature of Science
    • The Scientific Process
      • Asking Questions
      • Conducting Investigations
      • Gathering Data
      • Communicating Results

Informal Categories

  • Collecting
  • Financial Literacy

Audience

To use this activity, learners need to:

  • see

Learning styles supported:

  • Involves teamwork and communication skills
  • Uses STEM to solve real-world problems
  • Involves hands-on or lab activities

Other

Access Rights:

  • Free access

By:

Source Collection

  • Mixing in Math

Rights:

  • , © 2010, TERC, Inc., MA., 2010

Funding Source:

  • NSF, ESI-0406675 and DRL-0713537