I was at the NCTM conference in Atlantic City in October and saw the neatest money activity. It was a sudoku game played with coins. Besides the great logic, reasoning, and planning skills that emerge from this kind of puzzle activity, it is a great way to help young children identify coins. Instead of buying the game, I thought I would make one myself.
I created and laminated the board below.
Once the board is laminated, I used my hot glue gun to glue on some plastic coins in various places. Then my board looked like this.
I made 6 different boards with varying degrees of difficulty.
I wrote a number at the bottom of the board to correspond with the envelopes (the gold 5 X 7 size) that held the coins necessary for solving the sudoku puzzle. Mine look like those pictured below, but I made some cute labels for you to put on your envelopes. See download below.
This is what a finished set looks like. Your set will be better with the label. To begin this activity I am enclosing the coins the students will need to complete the sudoku. As they get better at this kind of brain teaser, you can make it more challenging by supplying more coins than necessary for solving.
***IMPORTANT TIP- When gluing the coins on the laminated board, make sure you leave heads and tails showing to help students generalize the different sides of the coins!
It was a lot of fun making this game and I hope you enjoy it! Have a wonderful, restful, well-deserved break!
