Cents vs Sense

The second half of first grade is always a lot of fun. The children have gained (miraculously, I think) maturity over the Christmas break, and they are raring to go. My class this year, as usual, is giving many chuckles. I might be a tad biased, but really 6/7 year olds are truly the greatest. They love life, they love me, and they (most importantly) are learning to love Jesus! Such precious times I've had in Bible class as they explore learning about God. This week in particular we've been learning about Jesus as a boy. I've really seen the wheels turning as we delve into how Jesus would have lived and how honoring our parents means obeying with a good attitude. (Yeah, it can be convicting for teachers as well!)


In math class today, we were rocking and rolling learning about money. The currency of the day was the half dollar and dollar. The half dollar coin was a little confusing for them since, well, we don't really use that coin any more. However, I should have my hands on that coin soon, and hopefully will help clarify about this coin. We also discussed the dollar, which as always is a very fascinating lesson. Truly it is! All first graders know about bills is that they spend. So we spent time today discussing how they are printed on special paper, the letter that shows where the dollar was printed (Side note: why does San Francisco use L, Atlanta has F, and New York a B? Make sense? Anyone? Yeah, me either.), and the different serial numbers.


Anyway, we moved on to writing out dollars and cents. I explained about the decimal point and then wrote $1.00 on the board. I pointed to the one and asked how many dollars - they replied, 1. I pointed to the cents and asked, "How much cents does Miss Peeler have?" Yeah, you guessed it! They all promptly replied in unison, "NONE!"


Apparently, Miss Peeler has no SENSE to ask her class if she has any CENTS!!!! It was all I could to to keep from chuckling - and best of all, they didn't get it that they had agreed that I have no sense, oops cents!