Penny Activities for Kids

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!).

Ghost crafts are a lot of fun for kids to make and they’re a way to get into Halloween crafting that’s not really scary. Here are some easy ghost crafts for you to make with kids, whether it’s your kiddo at home or a class full.

I love this simple ghost made with a pompom or cotton ball covered in paint and used as a stamp. This one is from Crafts on Sea and you can have kids just hold the pompom or hold it with a clothespin to make it a little less messy.

Use cotton balls and printable facial expressions to make these silly ghosts from Housing a Forest. The post includes the printable templates or you can just add googly eyes.

Little fabric ghosts are a classic, whether you make them with white fabric or fall or Halloween fabric. Buggy and Buddy shows you how to make these little ghosts with a few cute embellishments. Just make one or two or make a garland or Halloween tree full of them.

There always seem to be paper plates lying around, and this paper plate ghost from Crafts by Amanda is a fun one. There’s a printable in the post for the facial features and arms, or kids can draw their own faces (and leave off the arms if you want to keep it simple).

What kid doesn’t love peeling dried glue? Turn that impulse into a craft with these glue ghosts from Friends Art Lab, and don’t miss the tip in the post that helps you turn these into window clings.

This handprint ghost in the window craft from Glued to My Crafts is so cute and easy for kids to make alone or with help. The post shows lots of variations so it would be fun to make these in a classroom and let each kiddo design their own “window” or add embellishments.

These sweet little tissue paper ghosts from Red Ted Art are actually mini pinatas, but you can just make it as a ghost without anything inside if you’d rather.

And you know I love a good kids’ sewing project so I can’t resist sharing these little felt ghost puppets from The Craft Train. Kids can sew them by hand or you can make them out of paper if you don’t want to try sewing them. The template for the ghosts is free to download, and you can also just make little softies instead of puppets if you like.

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