Open Wide, Look Inside

My Rows and Piles of Coins written by Tololwa M. Mellel and Illustrated by E.B. Lewis is set in Tanzania in the 1960s and tells a story of helping loved ones and saving money.  It was awarded the Coretta Scott King Award in 2000.

My Rows and Piles of Coins tells a story of a Tanzanian boy, Saruni, who helps his mother at the market.  In turn, she rewards him with ten coins for his help.  Instead of purchasing a toy or food at the market, Saruni puts his coins in a money box and counts them each night.  He hopes to purchase a bicycle in order to help his mother run errands and bring larger loads to the market.

“I emptied the box, arranged all the coins in piles and the piles into rows.  Then I counted the coins and thought about the bicycle I longed to buy.” (Mollel 1999, p. 11)

Curriculum Connections:
My Rows and Piles of Coins lends itself nicely to the discussion of earning and saving money, helping others, and making decisions about wants versus needs.  This book correlates well with the Virginia History and Social Sciences Standards of Learning K.7, 1.8, 1.9, 2.9, and 3.9.  It is appropriate for all elementary school grades.  My Rows and Piles of Coins could also be used in a math lesson about money.

Additional Resources:
Where’s the Best Buy Activity: This is an interactive game that encourages children to select the best price for a toy from three different options.

Piggy Bank Wrapper: This sheet is provided by the American Savings Education Council.  It is a wrapper that can help students turn a coffee can into a piggy bank.  The wrapper has space for children to write their name, the item they are saving for, and the amount of money they hope to save.

Piggy Banking: This is another interactive game.  Students are asked to perform tasks and are then paid for their effort.  Students must count coins to deposit in their piggy bank as well.

Want Versus Need Lesson Plan: This lesson plan uses the book The Rag Coat by Lauren Mills.  Students work in groups to cut out pictures from magazines and categorize items according to wants versus needs.

General Information:
Book: My Rows and Piles of Coins
Author: Tololwa M. Mollel
Illustrator: E. B. Lewis
Publisher: Clarion Books
Publication Date: August 1999
Pages: 32
Grade Range: 1-5
ISBN-10: 0395751861
ISBN-13: 978-0395751862

Saturday Sancocho, written and illustrated by Leyla Torres, introduces students to the art of bartering. The author/illustrator has included eye-catching, realistic illustrations that will help children envision a bustling South American marketplace.

Every Saturday Maria Lili looks forward to making a sancocho dinner with her grandparents. However, on this day Mama Ana has nothing in her kitchen but eggs, and there is no money for any of the ingredients.  Maria Lili is disappointed, but Mama Ana has a plan, “we will use eggs to make sancocho.”  “Egg sancocho! Everyone knows sancocho is not prepared with eggs,” says Maria Lili. “Come, my dear, we are going to the market.”  As they make their way through the market Mama Ana trades her eggs for the ingredients she needs. After a few stops she begins to trade some of her newly acquired goods for more ingredients. “The next stop was the stall of Dona Carmen. She was not interested in the eggs, but Mama Ana managed to trade nine plantains for four pounds of thick cassava.”  For their last important ingredient, the chicken, Mama Ana has another idea. Knowing they have plenty of vegetables and must make a big trade for the chicken she says, “Let’s divide the vegetables equally between the two baskets.” After some haggling she successful trades one of the baskets for a chicken and they head home to make their Saturday Sancocho.

Curriculum Connections
This book would work well in an Economics unit as an introduction to trade and barter. It would work best in a 1st or 2nd grade classroom. The concepts included in the book integrate well with lessons where students are asked to distinguish between the use of barter and the use of money in the exchange for goods and services. (SOL 2.8)

Additional Resources

• The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia has a lesson plan based on the book, as well as other economics lesson plans on their teacher resources page.
• This Bartering for Bargains quiz is a good extension for an economics lesson.
• Escape from Barter Islands is an interactive game about trading.
• This website has two power point presentations with lots of facts and history about bartering.

Author: Leyla Torres
Illustrator: Leyla Torres
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
Publication Date: 1999
Pages: 32
Grade Range: K-2
ISBN: 978-0374464516

You Can’t Buy a Dinosaur with a Dime is a children’s story by Harriet Ziefert which involves a little boy named Pete who learns to save money in order to buy a small dinosaur from Harry’s Store.  Pete learns that it takes time and effort to earn the money he wants to spend.  The book illustrates Pete laying all of his coins face- down on the table in order for him to properly count the number of change he has in his bank.  By the end of the story Pete realizes that the less he spends, the more he can save for a future shopping trip.

• “Pete’s bank is almost empty now.  He puts it on a shelf.  He has a brand- new dinosaur and thirty cents total wealth.” (pg. 6)

• ” ‘You’ll get two dollars,; ” says Dad, ‘if you clean the yard.  Then you can start to save again.  The work is not too hard.’ ” (pg. 9)

• “Pete makes a tough decision.  Dad’s waiting at the door.  He chooses Stegasaurus- and won’t spend any more.” (pg. 20)

Curriculum Connections
You Can’t Buy a Dinosaur with a Dime would be extremely useful to read to students as an introduction to a unit on spending and saving.  It reviews the idea of buying an item in a store, as well as saving money over a period of time in order to have a greater amount to spend later on.  These ideas connect with the Virginia SOLs K.7, 1.8, and 1.9 in Economics which explain that people have to work to earn money, have to make choices because they cannot have everything they want, and that people save money for the future to purchase goods and services.

Additional Resources

• This lesson plan looks at the story Money, Money, Honey Bunny and has the students focus on what good and services are being exchanged.

• This lesson teaches students the idea of opportunity cost and what has to be given up in order to buy something else.

• An imaginary trading post is produced in this lesson plan where students have a certain amount of goods and services they can exchange between each other.

General Information
Book: You Can’t Buy a Dinosaur with a Dime
Author: Harriet Ziefert
Illustrator: Amanda Haley
Publisher: Blue Apple Books
Publication Date: may 2003
Pages: 32
Grade Range: K- 2
ISBN: 978- 1929766819

Fleas, written by Jeanne Steig & illustrated by Britt Spencer, is a comical look at bartering.

With it’s quirky characters and colorful pictures, Fleas is all about bartering. The main character Quantz starts off by rubbing a dog in his garden and catching his fleas. He trades the fleas for a talkative old uncle and the uncle for some cheese. The bartering continues on until Quantz at the end of bartering has a bone. Fleas has touches of rhyming, “A wig! What a glorious thingamajig!” It also incorporates snippets of alliteration “The tiny creatures dance graceful gavottes, fancy fandangos, and riotous rhumbas.”At the end of the story, Quantz sees the dog, and they step inside a tent where all of the characters, along with all of their trades, have made a circus.

Curriculum Connections

Fleas is a great resource when you are studying bartering. It talks about how you can trade an item with someone else, if that person wants the item you are wanting to trade. It is connected to VA SOL Social Studies Economics 2.8 The student will distinguish between the use of barter and the use of money in the exchange for goods and services.

Additional Resources

• For a lesson plan that has students bartering go to Learn NC.
• Potato: A Tale from the Great Depression is a lesson plan with worksheets.
• Students can learn a song about Trading.
• Lewis and Clark barter with the Native Americansis a webquest that students can do on bartering.
• The Day 1-B is for Barter activity at A Virtual Field Trip to the Fed is an activity using Native Americans and Colonial American Trappers.

General Information

Book: Fleas
Author:Jeanne Steig
Illustrator: Britt Spencer
Publisher:Philomel Books
Publication Date: 2008
Pages: 32 pages
Grade Range: 2-6
ISBN: 9780399247569