Dollars and Cents
Money in the everyday
Money is a measurement children meet every day, and this unit is about handling it practically: knowing the relationship between dollars and cents, counting a collection of coins, estimating what a few things will cost, and solving simple money problems. A dollar is one hundred cents, so money works as two units together, and counting coins is just adding their values. Because money is so concrete — real coins in a real hand — it is one of the most useful and motivating contexts for the number skills Year 3 has been building all year.
Dollars and cents
The relationship at the centre of money is that one dollar equals one hundred cents. This makes dollars and cents a two-unit system, with cents the smaller unit and dollars the larger, exactly a hundred to one. The same dollar can be made from many different coin sets — a single dollar coin, two fifties, or five twenties — and seeing those equal totals builds a feel for the value. Knowing how dollars and cents relate is what lets a child move between counting cents and naming an amount in dollars.
Counting a handful of coins
To find how much a handful of coins is worth, you count them up — and counting from the largest coin down keeps it manageable. A dollar, then fifty, then twenty, then ten builds to a running total of $1.80. This is addition with the values of real coins, the same skill from the Number strand applied to what is in a purse. Counting money carefully matters in a way few classroom sums do, because the total is real, and a child who can count coins can check their own change at a shop.
Counting coins of one kind
When the coins are all the same, counting them is skip-counting in that coin's value: four twenty-cent coins are 20, 40, 60, 80 cents, and three fifties are 50, 100, 150. This is exactly the skip-counting and times-table work from earlier units, now with money. It is a fast, reliable way to count a pile of identical coins, and it shows why knowing the times tables pays off in real life. Counting coins of one kind is often the quickest first step before adding the rest of a mixed handful.
Writing it two ways
A coin total can be written in cents or in dollars and cents: 170 cents is also $1.70, and 80 cents is $0.80. The two digits after the point are always the cents, so eighty cents is $0.80 and five cents is $0.05, never $0.8 or $0.5. Being able to write an amount both ways, and to read a price in dollars and cents, is part of identifying the dollar-cent relationship. Prices in shops are written in dollars and cents, so reading that form fluently is an everyday necessity.
Estimating a total
Often an exact total is not needed, just a rough idea, and estimating is the skill for that: round each price to the nearest dollar and add the rounded amounts. Prices of 95c, $2.10 and $1.40 round to $1, $2 and $1, giving about $4 — close to the actual $4.45. Estimating money is genuinely useful at a shop, where a quick estimate tells you roughly what you will pay and whether you have enough, without adding every cent.
Solving a money problem
The skills come together in simple everyday problems: do I have enough, and how much is left? If you have $5 and something costs $3.80, comparing the two shows you can afford it, and subtracting tells you $1.20 is left over. These are the small money decisions of real life, solved with the comparing and subtracting Year 3 has practised. Solving simple money problems in everyday contexts is the practical payoff of the whole unit. With the dollar-cent relationship, coin counting, estimating and simple problems all in hand, a child can handle everyday money — and the Year 3 Measurement strand is complete.