Fantastic Beasts: Money

The theme Finny has chosen for this week’s money topic is Fantastic Beasts. He was excited to use some of his Fantatsic Beasts crafts.

Teddy has been up to MISCHIEF! Newt opened up his pouch and found…

Finny, also known as Newt, wrote this question, then asked me to fill Teddy’s pocket so that neither of them knew how much money was in there.

Ioan and Finny added up the total amount of money that Teddy had taken. When they were up to £108, Finny added the money by going 10p + 50p + 10p + 50p = £110.20. Ioan spotted a way that he could have added this up a bit more easily, but both ways got the same answer. Whilst we were talking about this we somehow swapped our answer to £109.20, so they used this as their starting point for the following questions.

Pistachio has stolen one copper coin. How would this change Teddy’s total?

Ioan identified that the 1p and 2p coins are both copper. He worked out what this would give him when combined with Teddy’s £109.28.

Persimmon has a silver coin. What could Teddy’s total be?

Finny knew that silver coins were 5p, 10p, 20p and 50p, so he started off by adding 5p to £109.28.

He then added the remaining silver coins to Teddy’s total.

Dumbledore buys 12 sherbert lemons. How much has he saved?

Ioan is our young Dumbledore, so this question was for him.

What if he bought 120 or 1,200?

Ioan used his previous answer to calculate the saving Dumbledore would make buying 120 or 1,200 sherbert lemons, using the ’12 for £1′ deal.

Kowalski Quality Baked Goods

As Cian, our Jacob Kowalski, was at preschool, Finny decided that Zouwu and Dougal (a male Demiguise) would sneak into Jacob’s bakery, looking for food.

As usual, we were going for progress over perfection. These videos are not rehearsed, so in longer problems they naturally make some small mistakes. These mistakes used to frustrate them, so for years Liam and I have consciously tried to point out the (many!) mistakes we make ourselves on a daily basis, and how we grow and learn from them.

Letting children learn from their mistakes helps build resilience and is essential to raising a confident, capable, happy, and successful adult. It also allows them to develop important social and emotional skills.

I’ve spoken with them both about what they want me to do if I see them making any mistakes, and they both said they prefer if I let them know as they make them, then let them try and figure out the answer independently. This means that they are now much better at dealing with mistakes and automatically move on to solving them, showing self compassion, rather than worrying about making them in the first place.