Every morning I make a list for Alex of what we’re going to do that day. (It helps make transitions much smoother when I can appeal to the impersonal authority of the whiteboard.) This morning as I wrote the list I said, “When Colin goes down for his nap, we’re going to do a coin study for Five in a Row.”
Alex’s eyes sparkled. “Put ‘nap’ on the schedule for right now.”
Sadly, toddlers don’t nap right after breakfast even if their sisters really want them to. But eventually he and his grabby fingers went into the crib, and Alex and I settled down with a handful of U.S. coins, a sprinkling of foreign coins, and a magnifying glass.
We focused on U.S. coins first: their names, their values, and their pictures and markings. We had a standard penny, a new penny, and an old wheat penny from 1956, plus new and old nickels, some dimes, and a few of the state quarters as well as the standard eagle-back quarter. We identified the presidents on the coins and talked about the things that are written on them. Then I gave Alex some coin puzzles: show me different ways of making 26 cents, 30 cents, 51 cents.
We looked at the few foreign coins that had come easily to hand when I looked – Michael actually has quite a bit of foreign currency, so this was just a sample. I had a 1919 Australian penny, some Mexican peso coins in various denominations, and several Canadian coins, mostly current but including one penny with George VI on it. We made note of who and what were on these coins as well. We tried to make rubbings of coins, without much success: we just got smudgy circles. Oh well.
Finally I suggested that Alex design her own coin. Her first reaction: “But it’s against the law!” No, I explained, it’s only against the law to make copies of real coins trying to fool people. I drew the circles for her and helped with some of the spelling. Here you have the results: the Alex 1000 dollar coin.
She put her name on a wavy banner under the portrait, which I thought was a nice touch.
The back has labeled pictures of three states. Why these three? She didn’t say. She traced pieces from her states puzzle.
You might be thinking that those stray, partially erased lines are evidence of sloppy work. No. Alex eagerly explained to me that those make the coin harder to copy. (One of the history-of-money books from yesterday had a section about anti-counterfeiting techniques. We pulled out a $20 bill to see for ourselves, and Alex was captivated.)
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