Adding Money

 

Over the weekend I received a one-dollar bill that was marked like the one above.  Mine was even stamped with colorful balloons. If you click on it, it will take you to a website called Wheresgeorge.com that lets you track where your dollar bill has been before. The one that I chose as an example had been in many stores, in many places, and used to pay for many different things.

 Although I would never write on a bill myself, I thought this was a wonderful idea for introducing a lesson on adding money.  The students brainstormed ways they add money in their own lives.  Some said earning it, saving it, or finding it.  Others remembered that grandmothers and tooth fairies are notorious for giving it as gifts.  After that, our lesson went something like this...

 

Our destination on a cross-curricular time machine was the Colonial Market in 1776.  Having already learned about Betsy Ross, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Paul Revere, each student wore a name tag and pretended what Colonial Market merchandise they would purchase in order to carry out their historical achievements.  But of course, since this was our Math lesson for the day, they also had to provide a receipt using double-digit addition for the purchase price of the items in their historical shopping cart.