Target: $0
Your total: $0
Choose money to make the target amount
| Tap coins and notes | Add them to your total. |
| Match the target | Reach the amount exactly. |
Coin Counting gives you a target amount and a tray of coins and notes. Tap them until your total matches exactly. Go over and you have to rethink; stop short and you are not done. It is money arithmetic in the form it actually takes at a shop counter.
Handling money is one of the first genuinely useful applications of addition a child encounters, and it is harder than plain sums because the values are irregular. Working out that a quarter and a half make three quarters, rather than counting in ones, is exactly the mental flexibility this practises.
Start with the largest value that fits. Taking the biggest note or coin that does not overshoot, then filling the remainder, is the standard method and it is how people actually count out money.
Work out the gap after each choice. Rather than adding blindly, asking how much is still needed turns the task into a series of small subtractions, which is the skill worth building.
Talk through the awkward amounts. Totals that need several small coins are the ones children stumble on, and walking through one together is worth more than several easy rounds.
Connect it to real shopping. Letting a child pay with actual coins after practising here is where the skill genuinely lands, because the game and the shop become the same task.
You are told the total is too high, so you need to rethink your selection.
From about five, once a child is comfortable adding small numbers.
Dollars and cents, with familiar coin and note values.
Because the values are irregular. Adding 25 and 50 requires more flexibility than counting in ones or tens.
Completely free, with no trial and no unlock. Coin Counting loads with the page and plays immediately, without an install step or a video ad first.