Material required:
Bucket
Bag of Coins
Painters Tape
It is an active game that helps children to develop coin recognition according to their value and further advances their counting skills using simple addition and subtraction strategies. In this game, students race to throw coins in a bucket to reach a value of 1$. Each learner will take a turn and toss a coin in their team’s bucket marked by a tape about 5cm feet away from the bucket, and if the coin gets in, the coin’s value is added on the board and the bag goes on to the next person in line. Every time a coin gets in, the amount is added to the total on board. If they miss, the next person gets their turn. The first team to reach $1 wins the game. Games such as these can promote healthy competition to motivate learners.
Please find below the link to the activity:
https://www.teachstarter.com/us/teaching-resource/coin-toss-active-game/
Games are communicative in nature, whether they are played using digital technology or physical movement, because either they lend more meaning to abstract concepts and ideas. They assist in fostering learners' abilities to think, understand and communicate. Similarly, in order to this play, students are required to develop a sense of clarity on what has to be done and how, and in doing so they strengthen their comprehension and communication skills. It is natural that when students are given an opportunity to discuss strategies with their teammates, it will result in improving their communicative abilities. It has been asserted by Zhu (2012) that playing games motivates children to learn the language, because it helps them to manipulate a game providing intrinsic rewards.
When dealing with money, learners will also develop financial literacy, as they will be learning to count number of cents to make $1.
An activity like this where children are working in teams to reach their desired target facilitate the ethos of collaborative learning. It also promotes inclusion as every child gets a turn to throw a coin, and work out in teams when counting the number of coins they have collected in total.
This activity involves precision and physical movement to ensure the coin reaches the bucket, which means children will use their creativity to not to miss the target using precise hand eye coordination and movement. Being an active activity, it will also heighten learners’ curiosity to understand other children's body movement to get the coin inside the bucket. Adding coins to check if they have reached the required value will also keep students mentally conscious and active prompting many interesting responses.
This activity allows students to recognise Australian coins (5c, 10c, 20c, 50c), as the bag will be having different Australian cents, so it also develops learners' understanding of cents, and how many are required to make 1$. When working out the total, students will practice critical thinking and problem-solving skills using addition and multiplication to get the answer. It can also be considered as a strategy game, as students need to process and plan their move, which in turn fosters cognitive and analytical thinking.
A game like this can be easily improvised, where children can proceed to the next level, where they have to collect a total of $2 or $3 . By doing so, the levels can be made more challenging for the students in higher grades, such as Year 2 and Year 3.