Aaron’s word of inspiration this week is penny.

PENNIES!

Ok, just hear me out!

Canada discontinued the use of pennies as currency in May 2012!! MAY OF 2012!!! NINE YEARS AGO!!!!

And yet, during my number sense unit on money this month, I had to teach pennies!

PENNIES THAT WE DON’T EVEN USE ANY MORE!

I get it, my littles are all 7 and 8 years old and they need to be able to make change by one’s. Some of them are so bad at number sense that skip counting just isn’t going to work for them. We are working on it, but ya know what? Number sense is the hardest strand of math for my littles. It’s hard to grasp at such a young age. So, I get it. Let’s make it easy on them and keep the pennies around in their work books and in lessons.

But if I have a little YouTube video clip with a song about Canadian coins, pennies are not there. If I have a chart of Canadian coins, pennies are not there. If I ask them to count the change in their adult’s wallet, YEAH THAT’S RIGHT PENNIES ARE NOT THERE.

SOOOOOOOO my question to all of you out there who can’t do anything to correct this flaw in the Ontario Mathematics curriculum is – WHY DO WE STILL TEACH PENNIES?!?!?!

The children will never have to make change with them in real life. And yes, ok I also concede that the concept of rounding up or down to the nearest 5 would be way too difficult for my littles, and honestly any other grade 2 class, but still. What’s the deal!?

A big thank you to Aaron for once again allowing me the space and topic to have a good old fashioned Sunday morning rant.

Happy May 2-4 to all my lovely Canadian readers! Here’s to the long weekend! And actually I get another one next weekend so I only work Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday! HA!