Building Children’s Background Knowledge:
Using Money in Dramatic Play
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Karla: Okay, how much?
Child: Five.
Karla: Five dollars? Is that my receipt? Thank you. I’ll see you later!
Karla Alamo, Preschool Teacher: Dramatic play is always a center that our kids love. And the kids were able to create every single item and every single sign with numbers, letters, money. Everything that comes to having a grocery store in a classroom, they did. Some of them did not know how a dollar looks, or what a coin looks like. So I ran to my purse, and I got a dollar, and I came back.
Karla: So, my friends, this is real money. Look at the color.
Karla Alamo: You always think that a kid would know what money looks like, but some of them don’t. I have to step back because I cannot think that all these kids know what I’m talking about. You just have to step back and think: what am I doing? What’s important here is them. You know, even though we got the print-out, it just doesn’t look the same; it doesn’t feel the same. So I really want to give them the experience that, “This is how it looks. This is real money, and this is what you use to pay at the store.”
Child 1: Here’s your money!
Child 2: Thank you!
