Counting Pennies, Nickels, and Dimes to Find a Total Amount

Here is where this shows up in real life. This is exactly how a cashier counts a drawer, and it is why skip counting by fives and tens mattered so much. This is worth learning because counting money is skip counting doing a real job.

Watch for it today, and when you spot it, tell someone what you noticed and how you knew. Ask yourself where else the same idea might be hiding, then go and look.

Here is something worth knowing today. Count coins from the largest value down. Start with dimes, counting by tens: ten, twenty. Then nickels, counting by fives: twenty five, thirty.

Then pennies, counting by ones: thirty one, thirty two. Two dimes, two nickels, and two pennies make thirty two cents. Always go largest first, because switching from big jumps to small ones is much easier than the other way around.

Watch out for switching count sizes mid stream. If you count ten, twenty, then say twenty one for a nickel, you undercounted. Finish all the dimes, then all the nickels, then all the pennies, in that order. Practice this a few times and it will start to feel easy.