If you don’t know it yet, I LOVE to celebrate holidays including the weird and mostly unknown ones! And if I can tie in some teaching for my little Boo, all the better! 🙂 May 23 is National Penny Day. Here are some ideas that you can use to celebrate this “cent”sational day! (SO cheezy I just had to throw it in!)
- make golden penny pancakes for breakfast (yummy!)
- visit a candy store and indulge in your favorite penny candy
- for your scientific child try some penny science experiments: how many drops of water fit on a penny, will it float or sink?, and magnetic pennies.
- toss a penny in a wishing well or fountain while making a wish
- count them
- read books such as Henny Penny, Angelina’s Lucky Penny, or my favorite- Penny: the Forgotten Coin.
- see how many you can stack in a penny tower
- learn some penny verses such as :
Penny, penny,
Easily spent.
Copper brown
and worth one cent - give someone a penny for their thoughts
- take the pennies from your change jar, count them, roll them, and go do something fun with the money.
- practice fine motor skills by putting pennies in various slots/ containers such as piggie banks, shoe boxes with cut out slits, and toilet paper rolls.
- purposely place “heads up” pennies in various locations for strangers to find so that others can have good luck!
- make a penny necklace
- do crayon rubbings of both sides of the penny
- talk about the importance and the historical significance of the penny
- penny worksheets from homeschooling.about.com
- put pennies in empty plastic easter eggs and shake ’em while you dance!
- visit the HIP Pocket Change Website (History In your Pocket) Its a great resource from the US mint- with the history of the penny, to how coins are made, a scout corner with ideas to earn merit badges with coins, as well as some cartoons and games… A few of my favorite are the Coin Memory Game, an online wishing well, and a lot of different downloads of coins to print and color!
Another reason you should celebrate this holiday that I just learned while typing this post- This year is not only the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, but the 100th anniversary of the Lincoln cent that first appeared in 1909!!! So celebrate Penny Day and part of US history!
Happy Teaching and may the learning and FUN never end!!!
Many thanks to eHOW, Saving Advice.com, PBS Kids, LessonPlansPage.com, All Recipes.com, HIP Pocket Change and Science Museum.org for their great ideas.
Hey girlie.
I have a question for you and I don’t have an email for you anymore? I hope it’s ok to ask on here.
It’s about bug and since You know her age group well – and in the capacity of a teacher. I am hoping you can help me with this decision.
I want to hold her back to repeat 1st grade. She is struggling (really struggling) with reading, she has MAJOR testing anxiety (and her current charter school tests the crap out of her!), she is the smallest (still catching up from early birth), she is a little awkward socially (think MILD Asperberger-type symptoms – she doesn’t understand the subtleties of social situtations – which I’m sure many 1st graders don’t), and of course she deals with the social stigma of her skin condition (which is my biggest concern with starting her in a new school). I’m wondering if holding her back will be good both socially and academically, but I don’t want to bore her for a year and create the situation where she is the new kid and have her have to explain her skin condition to everyone again. We are going to be switching her to the local public school and so she has to make new friends anyway…What do you think? you can email me… wemdupea@gmail.com. 🙂 I’d appreciate any advice you can give. Should I just keep her in 2nd grade and get her extra reading help. I just don’t want her to always be behind and struggling when she already has so much to deal with.
I didn’t no there was a penny day!!! How fun! Great ideas…love it!
Love it! Thanks for the smile! I’m going to put this one on my calendar for next year!
I wish I had known about Penny Day!
Your post prompted me to look for a list of days and start a little calendar of ones I want to celebrate with my daughter. I found a good one on about.com:
Fun Days calendar
http://homeschooling.about.com/od/fundaycalendars/Holiday_Calendar_Celebrate_Special_Days_Every_Month.htm