Garage Sale Math

We had a garage sale over the weekend, Friday and Saturday. We had a LOT of stuff to sell. We did pretty well too! And I thought the yard sale signs I made wouldn't work, but they did, and to my surprise! Anyway. This was our very first garage sale. It is a ton of work! I knew it was going to be some work, but I didn't realize just how much went into it, but it was well worth it.

Whew!   :-D

The children had a lemonade/snack stand while we were selling everything else, so they were adding up money amounts (quarters) all day Friday and all Saturday morning.... Well, you know, when customers wanted to purchase snacks. You know what I mean, I think. 

We were exhausted by the time Saturday evening came. No energy left to count anymore. We placed the money we made in a bag and hid it away until we were able to count it. The time to count didn't arrive until this morning in our math lesson. I threw out the today's curriculum math lesson and we focused completely on counting the garage sale profit. 

The first thing we did was sort out all the coins and bills. They made dollar stacks of quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies while I sorted the bills. After everything was sorted, we started counting. I had them make a list of each coin and bill.

We counted the coins first.  After we counted each coin group and counted it again, they listed the amount for each coin.

Then we counted the bills, twice, and listed those amounts. This was especially fun for them as they have only handled coins up to now. 


At this point, Jonathan was done. He was just done. So I let him run off some energy out in the back yard while Adelle then added up each amount together. 

First she wrote down the 20's amount, lined up the 10's amount under that and added them. Took that total and wrote the 5's under that and added again. We followed that pattern until we got all the way down to pennies. 

This was a fun way to practice adding skills and reviewing place value while learning how to write dollar and cent amounts together. And I just now stumbled onto a website that has posted a Yard Sale Board Game. We might have to make and play this one through the summer. It looks like fun!

I won't announce publicly exactly how well we did, but, to the glory of God, we raised enough money to begin ordering curriculum for next school year!