Penny Activities for Kids

April 20, 2026 by Sarah White Leave a Comment

May 23 is Lucky Penny Day, and while the penny isn’t being produced in American anymore, we can still celebrate the pennies we have left with some fun penny activities.

You don’t have to use pennies for most of the activities in the penny lab from STEAM Powered Family (except for the experiment about cleaning pennies) so you can use whatever coins you have on hand or whatever small coins are available in your country. I love the bridge building activity, which I think would be fun for grownups to try as well.

In addition to cleaning pennies, you can also try to turn a penny green with this activity from STEAMsational.

Every Star is Different has a printable Montessori inspired pack of penny activities. There’s a hundred board using pennies, math activities using pennies, writing practice, coin sorting and more.This is a paid resource that’s more than 100 pages and you can purchase it here.

I love these easy penny spinners from Surviving a Teacher’s Salary because kids can decorate them and then play with them. You could also try making them with different coins and see which one spins the longest.

Play penny shuffleboard with this printable board game from Education.com.

If you’re willing to sacrifice some of your precious pennies to art, these little wreaths I found on Pinterest are super cute and would be a fun Christmas ornament. The originals were made with coins from the child’s birth year, which adds on the activity of getting kids to sort through the pennies to find their year.

And of course you can do coin rubbings and pressings in playdough and compare different designs on pennies if you have a collection with a few different design options. Or just give kids a pile of coins and have them sort by type and then count all the pennies (my daughter used to love doing that with her piggy bank!).

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Ice Cream Crafts for Kids to Make

We’ve gotten to the point in summer where I live where I spend a lot of time thinking about ice cream. While I’m trying to avoid eating ice cream daily as a way to beat the heat, let’s take a look at some ice cream themed crafts we can make instead.

And don’t miss these learning activities with an ice cream theme if you need more ideas.

One of the links in that post was to this cute puffy paint ice cream cone craft from Crafty Morning, which deserves more attention because it’s super cute and this version of puffy paint is easy to make and sensory fun for kids. They also have this cute handprint ice cream cone craft that’s super sweet for little kids to make.

You can use everyday materials of all sorts to make your ice cream cones. For example, you can use a sponge and pompom or cotton balls like stamps as in this craft from Fantastic Fun and Learning.

Or use a potato to make the top of the cone like this one from Made to be a Momma.

Make your ice cream from a doily, like this one from Crafts on Sea, which is also embellished with pompoms for sprinkles. I Heart Crafty Things has a similar project done with a cupcake liner instead of a doily.

Or try using cotton pads, which can then be decorated with watercolors, as shown in this tutorial from Happy Toddler Playtime. You could do the same thing with cotton balls if you don’t have cotton pads handy.

Cut a paper plate into a cone shape and have kids decorate it with this craft idea from Easy Peasy and Fun. One of hers shows using real sprinkles to decorate the ice cream, which is a great idea if you’ve got some old sprinkles lurking in the pantry. Or you can just draw on sprinkles or use other random things from around the house.

The Pinterested Parent has a printable for a mosaic ice cream cone craft, which is a fun way to use up bits of paper. You could also make it more of a collage with different kinds and colors of paper and different items to add to your ice cream.

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