Money worksheets

What this worksheet is for

Money is decimal arithmetic with a reason to care, and it is the context where careless place value stops being an abstraction: a pupil who writes the change as 65 rather than 0.65 has said something wrong about the world, not just about the notation. This page keeps every amount to two places, which is how prices are written everywhere, and offers the three questions that actually come up — adding prices, working out change, and buying several of the same thing.

Who it suits

Grade 2 to Grade 6, ages seven to twelve. Adding two prices under ten is the first-year exercise; change from a note follows; multiplying a price by a quantity is Grade 4 and up, because it needs multiplication of a decimal.

How to use the settings

Choose the currency first — the setting exists because a worksheet in dollars is no use in a classroom that spends pounds or złote, and the arithmetic is identical either way. Change questions always pay with a round note, which is what happens at a till and keeps the subtraction honest. Working space is worth adding for the change questions, because most pupils count up rather than subtract in columns, and counting up needs somewhere to write the steps.

What goes wrong

Losing the point is the classic fault, and it usually shows as an answer a hundred times too big or too small. The second is subtracting the note from the price instead of the other way round, which gives a negative and is worth catching as a reading error rather than an arithmetic one. The third, on multiplication questions, is multiplying only the whole part and adding the cents on afterwards.

Questions

Which currency should I use?

Whichever your class spends. The setting changes the symbol and where it sits — dollars, pounds and euros put it in front, złote after the amount — and nothing else, because the arithmetic is the same.

Why is the payment always a round amount?

Because that is what happens in a shop: you hand over a note. It also keeps the subtraction meaningful — change from an awkward amount is an arithmetic exercise with no story behind it.

Are there coin pictures?

Not yet. Counting a handful of coins is a different exercise and needs drawings of the coins themselves, which are on the list rather than on the page.