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COMMUNITY HELPERS
Coin Curiosity
Children will learn about bankers as community helpers and perform an experiment using water and coins.
Lesson Objective
Children will learn about the role of a banker as a community helper and use coins to experiment with water on surfaces.
Science
What You'll Need
- Coins - a penny, nickel, dime, and quarter for each child
- Eyedroppers - one for each child
- Small paper or plastic cups - one for each child
- Paper towels
- Chart paper and marker
- Water
What To Do
- Explain to the children that banks are a special kind of business that help us to save and manage our money. People who work in a bank have a variety of jobs; talk about the different jobs.
- Ask the children, “Have you ever been to a bank?” "What did you see at the bank?” "What did you do at the bank?”
- Let’s look at some money. Show the children the coins. “Do you know the names of any of these coins? We use money to pay for things. Today, we are going to use these coins to experiment with water."
- Ask the children some probing questions: “What would happen if I placed a drop of water on a penny?” “How many drops of water do you think will fit on a penny?”
- Encourage them to make predictions. Record each child’s prediction on the chart paper.
- Give each child an eye dropper, a small cup of water, a penny, and a paper towel. Have them spread out the paper towel and place the cup and coin on the towel.
- Show them how to use the eye dropper to place a single drop of water on the penny. Have them observe the drop of water, does it stay on the penny?
- Give the children time to place additional drops of water onto the surface of the penny. Remind them to count the number of drops as they do this.
- Ask each child how many drops they fit onto the penny before the water rolled off. Write their answers next to their predictions.
- Are students surprised by how many drops fit on the surface of their pennies? Were their predictions accurate? Did everyone fit the same number of water droplets onto their penny?
- Give each child a nickel, a dime, and then a quarter and let them try the experiment with each of the coins.
- What do they notice about the different coins and the amount of water that they can hold?
Resources
Home School Resources
Home educators: use these printable lesson PDFs to teach this lesson to your home schoolers. They're available in English and Spanish.
Content Provided By
Common Core State Standards Initiative – These lessons are aligned with the Common Core State Standards ("CCSS"). The CCSS provide a consistent, clear understanding of the concepts and skills children are expected to learn and guide teachers to provide their students with opportunities to gain these important skills and foundational knowledge [1]. Visit the CCSS
- There are currently no Common Core Standards for pre-k, but these lessons are aligned as closely as possible to capture the requirements and meet the goals of Common Core Standards. However, these lessons were neither reviewed or approved by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices or the Council of Chief State School Officers, which together are the owners and developers of the Common Core State Standards.
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