Making Change — Worksheets, Lesson Plans & Activities

For Teachers

How to teach making change

Making change is the natural next step after students can count money confidently. It is also one of the most practical math skills they will ever learn — every cash purchase depends on it. The challenge is that making change combines subtraction, counting up, and decimal place value, so students do best when they see more than one method and choose the one that makes sense to them.

Method 1: Count up from the price (the cashier’s method)

The count-up method is how change is made at a real register, and it is usually the easiest for students. Start at the price and count forward to the amount paid, naming each coin or bill as you go. If an item costs $6.40 and the customer pays with a $10 bill, count up: a dime to reach $6.50, two quarters to reach $7.00, then three $1 bills to reach $10.00 — so the change is $3.60. Because students count up instead of subtracting, there is no borrowing across the decimal, and the coins and bills they name are exactly the change they hand back.

Method 2: Subtract to find the difference

The subtraction method connects making change to the arithmetic students already know: amount paid minus price equals change. For $10.00 − $6.40, students line up the decimal points and subtract, regrouping as needed, to get $3.60. This method is faster on paper once students are fluent with decimal subtraction, and it is a good way to check an answer they first found by counting up. Showing both methods side by side helps students see that they produce the same total.

Method 3: Round up to the next dollar

Before students can make change, many need a reliable way to pay in the first place. The next-dollar-up strategy — sometimes called dollar up — teaches students to round any price up to the next whole dollar and hand over that many bills: $4.27 becomes five $1 bills, $12.05 becomes thirteen. Students never have to count out exact coins, they never come up short, and change always comes back. It is the most widely used approach in functional-math and life-skills classrooms, and it works as a bridge for any student who is not yet fluent with coins.

Make the fewest coins and bills

Giving correct change is one skill; giving it efficiently is another. Once students can find the right total, challenge them to use the fewest pieces of money — for $3.60, that is three $1 bills, two quarters, and a dime, not 360 pennies. This pushes students to start from the largest denomination that fits and work down, reinforcing place value and the same largest-to-smallest habit used when counting money.

Practice with a classroom store

Nothing cements making change like role-play. Set up a simple classroom store with priced items and play money, and let students take turns as customer and cashier. The cashier counts up the change aloud and the customer checks it. This turns an abstract subtraction problem into a real transaction and surfaces misconceptions quickly — especially the habit of rushing past the cents.

Common mistakes to watch for

Watch for students who subtract the larger digit from the smaller one in each column instead of regrouping (getting $4.40 from $10.00 − $6.40), who forget the cents and give change only in whole dollars, or who count up but lose track of the running total. Counting the change back aloud — price first, then each coin and bill up to the amount paid — catches all three errors before the “customer” walks away.