Counting Coins Song | Value of US Coins

Join our character Gerry in his hometown by the sea as he investigates the values of and the counting of US coins. Gerry does his research by buying ice cream and pickles.

Counting Coins Song Lyrics:

One penny is worth one cent; one nickel's worth five of them.
One dime has a value of ten; one quarter's worth twenty-five cents.
Five pennies make a nickel (in cents, it's worth five).
Two nickels make ten cents (that means they're worth a dime).
A quarter's twenty-five pennies, but let's make it shorter...
two dimes and a nickel also equal a quarter.

I bought one delicious dill pickle for two dimes, a quarter, and a nickel.
To find out how much I spent, I counted them up cent by cent.
I started with the quarter; it was worth twenty-five cents.
Each dime was worth ten, so I added both of them;
got thirty-five, forty-five, and then there was a nickel...
I added five, and paid fifty cents for the pickle.

(Chorus)

I bought an ice cream in the summertime with four pennies, three quarters, and a dime. The ice cream lady looked in silence, and then she counted up my cents.
She counted the three quarters - twenty-five, fifty, seventy-five -
then she added the dime.
The ten cents made eighty-five, and the four pennies left made it eighty-nine.
So it was eighty-nine cents for the ice cream; I ate until my shirt popped at the seam!

(Chorus)

On the penny is the sixteenth president, Abraham Lincoln;
he wrote The Gettysburg Address and The Emancipation Proclamation.
The third president, Thomas Jefferson, is on the nickel (or five cents);
he was the main author of the Declaration of Independence.
The dime has Franklin Delano Roosevelt, president thirty-two;
he instituted The New Deal and led America through World War II.
Finally, on the quarter is the first president, George Washington;
he was the Commander-in-Chief during the American Revolution.

(Chorus)

Five pennies make a nickel (in cents, it's worth five).
Two nickels make ten cents (that means they're worth a dime).
A quarter's twenty- five pennies, but let's make it shorter...
two dimes and a nickel also equal a quarter.

Learn More

This song targets TEKS and Common Core learning standards from 1st Grade, 2nd Grade and 3rd Grade. Look into the relevant standards here, or dig deeper into coin values here.

If you are interested in getting ideas on how to plan a robust standards-aligned counting coins lesson, we recommend checking out Instructure's recommendations for common core standard 2.MD.8. This page will help break down standard language, lay out the grade-appropriate level of rigor for each concept, and offer a variety of suggestions for activities (lesson seeds) that help students achieve their learning targets

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