One Hundred!

Max has shown an increased interest in numbers lately, especially in the context of money. He was asking me a lot about pennies, so I told him that 100 pennies equals one dollar. "That's a lot of pennies!" Then he asked if we could start a penny collection.

We searched the house, we asked Dad and Megan, and over the next week we collected 100 pennies in a jar. "But what would be really cool would be to put them in a line!" he decided. So I told him that I would buy some masking tape and we could make a penny line. Poor Max, he asked me every day for at least a week if I had bought any masking tape, but alas Mommy kept forgetting. 

Finally the big day arrived. I had remembered to grab the tape at my latest Target run, and we counted out all of the pennies into a pile. We stretched the tape out on the table and began to line up our pennies, drawing a line with marker after each group of 10. 

When the line was complete, we laid it out on the floor so we could see how long it was. He got to jump to see how far down the line he could reach, and we hung up the line on the wall to find out if it was taller than him (it was!)

In the following days, we repeated the project with dimes, nickels and quarters, but I think that pennies were his favorite. I mean, come on- it only takes four quarters to make a dollar. How boring is that? What can you do with a tape line of four quarters? One hundred is much more fun.