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!).

Michaelmas is one of those holidays that is religious in nature but also has a more secular meaning, especially in England.

Michaelmas is variously known as the Feast Day of saints Michael, Gabriel and Raphael or the Feast of the Archangels, and it is generally celebrated on September 29 (or November 8 in Eastern Christian calendars). In England it also marks the end of a quarter both financially and academically (if you’ve ever read a book that talks about Michaelmas term, this is what it’s talking about) and historically the end of the farming year, when accounts would be settled.

In a religious context it celebrates Michael’s defeat of Satan, which also involves slaying, or a least controlling, a dragon, but it’s also a day to mark the progression of the year into fall because it falls near the equinox.

Waldorf educational communities celebrate Michaelmas because Rudolf Steiner believed it was the second most important festival of the year after Easter. They may have a play or a field day celebrating feats of strength and overcoming fears. Season to Gather has a guide available for purchase that includes the story of St. Michael and the dragon, crafts and activities, recipes and more with a Waldorf approach.

I also found this publication from a Waldorf school that has lots of ideas for celebrating Michaelmas with groups of kids, doing things like obstacle courses, rope tugs and races. The booklet also includes songs and recipes to try.

Because they both have to do with saints and dragons, you can pull out your St. George’s Day activities for Michealmas, too, but here are a few more ideas specific to Michaelmas. I’d love to hear about your traditions if this is a holiday you celebrate.

Faith and Fabric has a cute St. Micheal softie project kids or adults can make.

Catholic Icing has a printable pack for purchase that includes stand up figures of the angels in color and black and white as well as coloring pages and the St. Michael prayer printable. She also has a printable party pack with a banner and angels you can use as cupcake toppers.

There are a lot of traditional foods that are involved in a Michaelmas celebration including bannock (a Scottish harvest bread), blackberries and goose (though many people sub chicken or Cornish game hens these days). You can also throw in angel food cake, or devil’s food cake, deviled eggs or spicy foods to celebrate overcoming the devil.

Another traditional activity at Michaelmas is hitting a pinata that is shaped either like Satan or a dragon. You can see this in action and get more details about how one family celebrates Michaelmas at Catholic All Year.

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