Searching for Dollars By: Dara Gramling Heather Hansard Lori Webber Faron Wiseman

Johnny’s birthday party is next week and Sarah is going to attend. She needs to buy him a birthday present. Johnny really likes The Dukes of Hazard, so Sarah is going to buy him a General Lee toy car. The car costs $8.95, but with tax it will cost $9.48.

Sarah goes to her room and empties her piggy bank to get the coins. She counted her coins, and she had twenty-eight quarters, ten dimes, twenty nickels and forty-eight pennies. She places money in a bag and takes it to the store. bnmrm bnmrm

The clerk tells her that they are short on dollar bills and have too many coins. She asks Sarah to come back with dollar bills instead of coins. Sarah’s mom does not have the bills to help Sarah pay with dollars. They go home to see if dad has bills to trade for Sarah’s coins.

Sarah’s dad says she needs to group her coins into one dollar amounts because he doesn’t have time to help her count the coins. Sarah goes into her room and begins to group her coins, but she needs some help. She calls her friend Ginny, and she asks her for some advice. Ginny tells her to put together groups of four quarters.

How many dollars would she have from her twenty- eight quarters??????

Sarah found that she had seven dollars in quarters. Is Sarah correct???????

Yes, she is correct because there are seven groups of four quarters, and we know that four quarters equal one dollar. Sarah still needs some help to figure out how to make more one dollar amounts from her coins. She calls Johnny’s best friend Muhammad and tells him what coins she had left.

Muhammad tells her that ten dimes make one dollar. Sarah tells Muhammad that she has ten dimes. Are they on the right track????

Yes, they are because ten dimes equals one dollar. Now Sarah has only nickels and pennies left. She calls Suzie and tells her what coins she has left. Suzie tells her that 15 nickels make one dollar, but when She counted her nickels by fives to check She only had $.75. How many nickels does it take to make one dollar????

It takes twenty nickels to make one dollar, so Sarah has one dollar in nickels. If she adds that dollar to what she already has, she will have a total of nine dollars. Help Sarah double check this addition by writing a math equation. XX Twenty

Does your equation look like Sarah’s?? $ $ $1.00 = $9.00 Is $9.00 enough for Sarah to buy Johnny’s birthday present? No. She still has pennies, so let’s see if she has enough to buy the car.

Sarah counted forty-eight pennies from her piggy bank. If we put this with the $9.00 that she already has, will she have enough to buy the present?? $ $0.48 = $9.48 DCCXL XIII

Now that Sarah has grouped all of her coins, she can go to her dad with her nine groups of one dollar and trade for dollar bills. She now has enough money to buy the birthday present for Johnny. She and her mom head back to the store with her nine dollar bills and forty-eight pennies.

Thanks for all of your help!! Johnny loved his General Lee car and Sarah had a blast at the party.