Money skills teaches more than identifying coins and bills. Teaching children with disabilities also helps to strengthen fine motor skills, task initiation, and sequencing skills.
The following websites provide activities and lesson plans which are free to download on a variety of activities:
Education World- A money math match activity where students will learn that different combinations of coins can represent the same amount of money.
Money Instructor– Free lesson plans on basic money skills including counting money, money math, vocabulary, coloring, handwriting, tracing activities and money games.
Practical Money Skills– A website designed to teach money skills including special needs children and adults. Includes lesson plans on making decisions, shopping, banking services and understanding credit. The website includes a teacher’s guide, student activities and PowerPoint presentations.
The Teachers Corner– A generated money worksheet. The worksheets allow you to choose from different currencies.
United States Mint-Produces circulating coinage in the United States. This webpage includes lessons for grades K-12 with lessons on each of the coins which are free to download.
Shopping Centers (or malls as we call them in North America) provide a great way for customers to walk from one store to another without the hassles of having to leave one store in order to go into another. Through the years, Shopping centers have added on movie theatres, arcades, and food eateries. This has led to a variety of ways of teaching children and adults with disabilities a number of skills.
Money Management.
Increasing money skills can be used in almost all areas of a shopping mall. Opportunities include stores such as banking, clothing , restaurants, etc. examples of items to teach include:
Will identify coins
Will identify money
Will count change
Will create a budget
will fill out deposit slip
Will fill out a withdrawal slip
Will use an ATM
Sensory
A shopping center provides a low-cost and effective way of arousing more of more of the five senses (hearing, sight, smell, taste and touch). Yankee Candle offers candles with a variety of fragrances including apple pumpkin, apple spice, beachwood, black cherry, etc. Bath and Body Works also provides samples for both olfactory (smell) and touch. Samples of fragrances include lotions, cream, massage oils and fragrance mist. Window shopping is an additional opportunity to enhance visual cues with teaching a number of basic skills. Other places include day spas, massage chairs and nail salons. Examples of sensory teaching activities include:
Window Shopping (Visual)
Will describe the color of the outfits
Will identify which items cost the most
Will describe how many of the outfits are the same, different
Will describe the various shapes (circle, square, triangle, rectangular)
Will count the number of items in the window
Olfactory (Smell)
Will identify a good smell
Will identify a bad smell
Will identify the smell (i.e. smells like apples)
Tactile (Touch)
Will identify the object
Will tolerate hand massage
Will touch the object
Will describe the shape of the object
*** Be mindful some children and adults may have sensory processing issues and can be oversensitive to sights, textures, flavors and smells.
Social Skills
Teaching social skills involves communication, decision-making, self-management and relationship building. Locations in a shopping center to develop these skills includes, eatery and restaurants, banks, department stores and movie theatres. Samples of teaching social skills includes:
Will greet the store associate
Will say thank you
When promoted, will ask for help
Will wait patiently
Will make eye contact
Will use appropriately voice tone
Teaching Prompts
A few guidelines in teaching new skills:
Teach a new skill at least 2-3 times. The shopping center allows multiple opportunities to work on a number of skills including money management, and social skills.
Allow the person to think for themselves use prompt levels to help navigate levels of independence: Independent, verbal, gestural and physical.
Allow for real choice-making. Choice is more realistic when it involves at least 3 items or more. Choosing a new outfit or an item from a menu are perfect examples.
