With supermarket shopping now the norm, many young children do not experience using coins before they start school. Children playing “shops” these days offer a piece of plastic or card as payment and the shopkeeper “swipes” it. Fortunately, class work on money can be linked to ongoing work on number.

Teachers can create simple problems in the decimal system for the children to practise mental strategies using the context of money. By the end of key stage 1, children are expected to recognise and appreciate the value of all coins and solve simple money problems involving pounds and pence. When you are demonstrating to the whole class, sets of “giant” card coins are useful, but children also need experience of handling coins for themselves. Real coins are always preferable. Talk about coins the pupils already recognise. Use the “giant” money, pegged to a washing line. Discuss the colour, size and shape of the various coins. Then pass round a collection of real coins in a “feely bag” and ask the children to recognise the different coins by touch. Follow the whole-class lesson with individual or paired work to make pencil or crayon rubbings of coins, play money games or press coins into clay or dough.

Sort boxes of money. Once pupils recognise coins confidently, they need to understand their equivalent value. Some find this difficult. Linking the work to counting can be helpful. For example, after a starter session counting in twos, show pupils a handful of 2p coins and a tin. Tell them you want their help to find out how much money you have. Ask them to count on two each time you drop a coin into the tin. Get them to agree on the number of coins dropped and how much they are worth. They then work in pairs, taking turns to drop coins into bags or envelopes while their partner counts. Let them use tins if you can tolerate the noise. In Year 2, when children see 100 1p coins, they soon realise how convenient it is to have just one coin to carry around.

Here are some other favourite activities: How many ways to make 20p? Fix 20p from the giant money pack to the board. Draw several boxes round it. Tell the children you want them to find out how many ways they can make 20 pence. Ask individual children to come to the board and stick equivalent coins in the boxes. More able pupils can make a record. Once the pupils have the idea, they work individually, using a similar layout on their whiteboards with collections of appropriate coins. This simple activity works equally well with smaller and larger amounts.

Would you rather? Go round the class asking questions like: Would you rather have three 5p coins or two 10p coins? Would you rather have two 50p or one pound coin? Pupils love this game and when they have had some experience can make up questions to ask the class.

Problem solving. Setting up a shop, cafe, or garden centre provides children with opportunities for enjoyable role-play while doing money calculations, but elaborate situations are not always necessary to achieve effective mathematical experience. In Year 1 a table “sweet shop” displaying various items at prices under 10p can be used to generate a variety of problems involving mental strategies. In Year 2, a cafe menu is useful. Write up a price list of interesting items on the board and adjust prices and questions as appropriate.

Links with parents can be particularly valuable when children are learning about money as they make the links to the real world. In the classroom we tend to work with artificially low prices to help children with their calculations and children are aware of this. They know they cannot buy much with 2p. One school I know has a library of money games for the children to take home. They are very popular with children and parents.

Similar games can be found in Making Sense of Money, a delightful booklet available free by contacting Tunbridge Wells Equitable Friendly Society (www.twefs.co.uk). The booklet has been awarded the pfeg - Personal Financial Education Resource - Quality Mark as a recommended teaching resource for four to eight-year-olds.

Marjorie Gorman, a former primary and advisory teacher, is now a consultant and author of ‘Success in Mental Arithmetic’ (Ginn pound;2.75-pound;3.50)