I recently handmade a picture book, Mental Math for America’s Young Kids, about pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters.
How many pennies make a nickel?
How many pennies and a nickel make a dime?
How many ways to add up to a quarter with pennies, nickels and dimes? etc.
These are not just nickel-and-dime questions but to help kids learn basic mental math skills.
This picture book is self-explanatory. It’s for America’s kindergarteners to learn to calculate, interchangeably, the value of coins in combinations of pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters.
The goal is to teach young kids about money which will lead them onto a path of basic financial literacy in their adulthood.
A 10,000-mile journey starts with Step One. A $10,000-savings start with Penny One.
It’s high time that we teach our young children, the future productive citizens and backbone of this greatest nation’s economy, the basic concept of “adds up” by valuing their pennies. It is an “old fashioned” way of teaching and learning the basics that should never be treated as outdated. For it can help prevent many young American adults from plunging into hefty financial debt that ruins their personal life like quicksand.
Small coins, big values.
I once read an inspiring story with factual numbers. A college professor was trying to make his students realize the power of a penny in compound interest when he made up a dramatic and fun story: Christopher Columbus once saved one penny at a yearly rate of 6 percent interest. He lived to be 515 years old till 2007, when his original penny earned him $107,775,640,215.56. (That is, 107 billion, 775 million, 640 thousand, 215 dollars and 56 cents!)
Wow! A seemingly “insignificant” penny can indeed add up so powerfully.
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