Sandra Dodd

http://sandradodd.com/coins

New page on ways children learn relative values (of coins, money,
other things related to coins/games).

I created the page as a place to keep Lisa's writing about kids and
coins.

I'd appreciate a proof-read pass for whether the other stuff I added
makes sense and the links work and all. Also, if anyone has other
stories or examples of instances or resources for kids to play with
values that way, I might like to add them.

Holly said when she was in the U.K. a few years ago, a girl asked her
very seriously whether it was true that we had a coin called a quarter
that was worth 25 cents and not 20. In the U.K. their coins are 1,
2, 5, 10, 20, 50. In the U.S. it's 1, 5, 10, 25 (and 50 is very
rare; I don't even know if they make them regularly). In the U.K.
they used to be called "pence," but since they went metric with it in
the 1970's, they call them "p"--the word "pee"--instead.

I don't remember which game it is, but some game--maybe Harvest Moon?--
instead of calling the units of "money" "gold," they just call it
"g" (gee).

In October I'm going to India. I'll stick my debit card in a cash
machine and get mysterious rupee-money. I will have very little idea
what it is or what to do with it. Any of my kids would be calmer and
braver about such things than I am, because they have dealt their
whole lives with different models of "money" and points and exchange.

Sandra

m_kher

--- In [email protected], Sandra Dodd <Sandra@...> wrote:
> In October I'm going to India. I'll stick my debit card in a cash
> machine and get mysterious rupee-money. I will have very little idea
> what it is or what to do with it.

Hundred paise make a rupee. Indian money had changed a lot since I was a kid to keep up with inflation. I think the smallest (least valued) coin these days is 25 paise. When I was a kid, there were coins for 1, 2, 3, 5, and 10 paisas. There are coins for 25 paise, 50 paise, 1 rupee, 2 rupees and 5 rupees. Some of them look confusingly similar, but they all say what they are.

That brings me to my pet peeve against US coins. They don't have a number on them. I mean a numeral like "1" or "25". Words are spelled out, but the word dime doesn't mean anything to say an English-speaker in India and the word quarter requires you to know quite a bit of English.

Manisha

Sandra Dodd

-=-That brings me to my pet peeve against US coins. They don't have a
number on them. I mean a numeral like "1" or "25". Words are spelled
out, but the word dime doesn't mean anything to say an English-speaker
in India and the word quarter requires you to know quite a bit of
English.-=-

I had never even thought about that.
And they have NAMES instead of valuations. Penny, nickel, dime,
quarter.
When a half dollar comes along it's called "a fifty-cent piece" more
often than half dollar.

And when we had metal dollars a few years back (after many years
without them) they called them "Sacajaweas" AND they were too near the
size of a quarter (though a different color).

Oh jeez! It doesn't even say "one dollar" (probably on the back...)

http://www.factology.com/sacajawea.jpg


You're right. Pretty rasty.

Reverses:
I never saw the first one shown here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2010NativeAmerican_Rev.jpg

Saw this one. It doesn't have a number, the other does; not a great
number. $1 is supposed to be written $1.00
I guess it's just impossible to control and enforce tradition and
rules in the face of metal coins already produced. :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_one_dollar_coin,_reverse.jpg

I like the names of Canadian dollar coins. They quit making paper
dollars a few years ago, and made a $1 coin. It has a loon on it, so
they called them "loonies." When they made $2 coins, they called
them "toonies" (for "two") and that makes perfect sense to me. :-)


http://blog.theavclub.tv/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/canadian-coins.jpg
(otherwise, their coins are about the same as American coins, with
nicer art generally. And numbers, I see!

Sandra



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[email protected]

I was recently reading a guide book to New Zealand and read about penny-farthings you could rent. I had no idea what this was so I had to do a search.
A Penny-farthing is one of the old fashion high wheel bikes. The front wheel is very large and the back is small. The relative ratio of the wheels is like a British Penny and a farthing. The ratio I think is more like half dollar - dime. I also learned that a farthing is a quarter of a penny.

Meg




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plaidpanties666

Cfebsleb@... wrote:
>I also learned that a farthing is a quarter of a penny.

And there were quarter farthings - sixteenths of a penny. Those were about the size of the modern half-P. Thirty odd years ago when I lived in England you'd still find the occasional quarter farthing being passed off as a half-pence, and old shillings were still accepted as... oh I'm forgetting, was it five or ten pence? Are those still floating around in the UK? I'm thinking a shilling was ten and the half-shilling was five (originally shillings were 12p). Anyway, it was certainly a case, like modern US money, where you had to know the value of the coin from the size and shape, rather than from any information on the coin, itself, since that information was significantly out of date.

---Meredith

Bernadette Lynn

On 18 August 2010 15:07, plaidpanties666 <plaidpanties666@...> wrote:

> Cfebsleb@... wrote:
> >I also learned that a farthing is a quarter of a penny.
>
> And there were quarter farthings - sixteenths of a penny. Those were about
> the size of the modern half-P. Thirty odd years ago when I lived in England
> you'd still find the occasional quarter farthing being passed off as a
> half-pence, and old shillings were still accepted as... oh I'm forgetting,
> was it five or ten pence? Are those still floating around in the UK? I'm
> thinking a shilling was ten and the half-shilling was five (originally
> shillings were 12p). Anyway, it was certainly a case, like modern US money,
> where you had to know the value of the coin from the size and shape, rather
> than from any information on the coin, itself, since that information was
> significantly out of date.
>
> ---Meredith
>



Shillings were valid as 5p and two shilling coins were valid as 10p pieces,
but not any more. They changed the size of the 50p, 10p and 5p coins so
they're all smaller now. All the coins are different sizes and shapes so
that blind people can tell them apart easily and they all have the value
written on the reverse.

You occasionally get a 5 euro-cent coin instead of a penny in change in
shops now since they're similar sizes and the same colour.

Bernadette.
--
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/U15459


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