Last week, when teaching my 1st grade class, I passed around the bills so they could see them. They thought it was fascinating that the bills were different colors AND different sizes, and they all had the same person on the front (Mao Ze Dong). We reviewed numbers and talked about a little about what the Chinese money was equal to in American money. I loved that the 1st grade teacher spoke up and explained to the students what it was like in the words they had already used in their class about how much money was worth (ex: 4 quarters = 10 dimes = 100 pennies = 20 nickels = $1)
Today, I was teaching the 3rd graders, and started out giving them a fill-in-the-blank numbers worksheet. It was good review of the numbers for them. It came from one of my favorite teaching resources, "Chinese Treasure Chest" Anyhow, while they were working on the numbers, I started to show them the money and had them think about how the bills were similar and different from what we use. They noticed the colors right away, but took some more hints before they realized the bills were all different sizes.
By the way, at the shopping market in Beijing--金五星百貨店, one of the stalls had these HUGE red envelopes. Much larger than what I'm used to seeing, maybe about 5" x 8" -- and I remarked about how big they were--and they told me it was for the larger denomination bills! (I never saw any bills larger than 100 Yuan while I was there, but apparently they exist)!
As we went through the value of each bill (saying the numbers in Chinese), I got the idea to put up bills in different combinations so that they would have to add the amounts and *then* say the amounts in Chinese. This was a fun exercise that incorporated not only language but math. Somehow I didn't think to do it before...but you bet I'll be incorporating that into any lessons involving money from now on! (It may not be all that earth-shattering, but I was still pretty pleased to have figured it out *during* class rather than afterward! ;-)