Money Counting 2 - Adding Tens

💡Tips for Parents

▸ Why It Matters These are numbered practice tokens, not a representation of any national currency. Add the printed values; picture size and the number of pictures do not give the total. This worksheet is the first time your child meets the 10-value coin, and it appears in every one of the eight rows on the page. Earlier practice with just 1s and 5s kept totals small and forgiving, but here totals climb into the teens, twenties, and even the thirties (one row mixes two 10s with two 5s for a total of 30). That range matters: guessing stops working, and your child has to actually track a running sum rather than eyeballing a small pile of coins. This worksheet is the bridge between counting single units and true skip-counting, a skill they will lean on constantly once money, time, and multiplication enter the picture. ▸ Getting Started Before your child touches a pencil, have them sort each row's coins into three little piles by eye: the 10s, the 5s, and the 1s. Count the 10-value coins first, out loud, in tens ("10... 20"). Then add the 5-value coins in fives ("25... 30"), and finish with any 1-value coins one at a time ("31... 32"). Only after saying the full running total should they write the number in the answer box. The row with a 5, a 5, a 10, and a 1 is a good place to practice this three-step rhythm, since all three coin values appear together. ▸ If They Get Stuck Watch for two common stumbles. A child who has just learned to count by tens may try to count every coin by tens, turning a 1-value coin into an accidental 10 and inflating the total. And the row with two 1-value coins next to a 10 can tempt a child to count the 1s first out of habit, breaking the running total. Fix both by insisting on the same order every time: biggest coin first, smallest last. If a total still comes out wrong, have them re-count with a finger physically touching each coin as they say its value, rather than counting with their eyes alone. ▸ Praise Points The real skill being tested here is not addition — it is knowing that a coin's printed number is exactly the number of steps you take when you count it, no more and no less. When your child moves fluidly from counting by tens, to fives, to ones within the very same row without prompting, praise that switch specifically. It shows they are reading each coin's value, not just moving through a memorized routine — exactly the understanding they'll need for every harder money worksheet that follows.

🎯What This Worksheet Builds

Builds directly on skip-counting fundamentals by introducing the 10-value coin for the first time and requiring the child to combine three distinct counting rhythms — by tens, by fives, and by ones — within a single row's total. Because every one of the eight rows includes at least one 10-value coin, and totals climb as high as 30, the child must track a running sum in their head rather than relying on quick recognition of a small coin pile, strengthening working memory alongside the counting skill itself.

👉Next Step

Once your child can total any row on this page in under a minute without recounting from scratch, move on to Money Counting 3, which retires the smallest jumps in favor of a new 25-value coin and raises totals toward 100. That worksheet asks the child to apply the same biggest-to-smallest counting order learned here, but with a coin value that does not divide evenly into the others, adding a fresh layer of challenge.