Coin Collecting

The Internet has an enormous number of resources that could provide years of educational experiences. Since my son was a coin collector, I want to recommend using the United Stated Mint Website for educational material. The Mint has an education section designed for students and teachers. The Teacher section of the Mint includes lesson plans, coin curricula, teacher newsletters and a new monthly Teacher Feature. The information is designed to help educators use coins to teach lessons on mathematics, economics, geography, and history. One Teacher Feature discusses American Veterans and their contributions to securing freedom. Sometimes the Mint offers free classroom materials including posters and book marks. You can join their Teacher Network and receive updates on the online programs.

The student section of the Mint is known as H.I.P. Pocket Change. It includes games, coloring pages, interactive games, videos, puzzles and Mint history and trivia. Their motto is “Coins are History in your Pocket.”  The games are lots of fun and I enjoyed the puzzles where you have to move around puzzle pieces to make a coin. The Mint educational material is well written and age appropriate. Why work with coins? They are inexpensive, plentiful, and easily collectible. With the 50 States’ and the National Parks’ Quarter Series you can use the coins to teach geography and American history. You can put together a map with the 13 Original Colonies and discuss the founding of our country. You can also put together a set of coins of your child’s birth year and discuss what was happening during that year. Many young collectors begin collection cents by year. This is fairly inexpensive and many people have coin jars with old “pennies.”

Happy coin collecting!