Scavenger Hunt for Coins of the World—New Zealand, Japan, and France!

Overview

Students will learn about the history, culture, and currency of the countries they "visit" using the United States Mint Coins of the World activity.

Preparations

Make copies of the attached handouts.

Arrange to use the school's computer lab and bookmark the United States Mint H.I.P. Pocket Change Coins of the World page ( www.usmint.gov/kids/cartoons/coinsOfTheWorld )

Activity

Divide the class into pairs or small groups.  Each group will need access to a computer.  Distribute one Scavenger Hunt Questions handout to each group for the country being studied.  (The link to the handouts and their answer keys are below.)

Tell the students that they will be "visiting" a country using the United States Mint's Coins of the World Web-based activity.  Tell the students that they should visit all of the "sites" in each country and review the travel guide.  During their visit, the students should complete the scavenger hunt.  Ask the students to print their passports when they have completed the activity.

As groups finish this project, collect their passports and their answers to the scavenger hunt questions.

Extension

Once students have completed all three Coins of the World adventures, challenge them to conduct research on another country and create their own Coins of the World display.  This display should include a travel guide that provides information about the country's geography, history, and culture and demonstrate how the country's coinage reflects these.

Standards

The project described above reflects some of the national standards of learning as defined by the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS), the National Council for Teachers of English (NCTE), and the International Society for Technology in Education.  These standards are listed below:

Language Arts Standards

Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts.  They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).

Students use a variety of technological and information resources (e.g., libraries, databases, computer networks, video) to gather and synthesize information and to create and communicate knowledge.

Social Studies Standards

Culture

People, Place, and Environments

Global Connections

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