Money Clense

Since my boy still has croup and pink eye I have us ALL on house arrest until Wednesday. So
we decided to count how many "monies" were in sister's piggy bank. After counting and figuring out that she can't afford college ($1.67) we decided to clean them.

My son suggested we use soap and water. "Not Erked" (not worked) she said.

I said what else could we use? He said the dishwasher! So we put them in the dishwasher.

"Not Erked" said my daughter.

I said I have an idea. First, we mixed a 1/2 cup of white vinegar and a tablespoon of salt and stirred it up. She usually holds the measuring apparatus while he pours in the ingredients,and then dumps it in the bowl. Then she stirs them in the bowl.

Dropping the pennies into the vinegar and salt mixture.

Drying the pennies and admiring their shininess.

Here are our clean and shiny pennies! They actually don't look that great in the picture, but they are MUCH prettier than they were before we started. We also dropped a few quarters, nickels, and dimes into the mixture and talked about how the chemical reaction that cleans them only works with copper. That's probably over the head of a 2 year old, and a 1 year old, but I thought it was good to expose them to new information :)

This is them recounting to make sure they were all there...
3 quarters, 6 dimes, 1 nickel, 27 pennies.

It was fun, quick, easy, and educational! If you do this activity with a child under age 3, please be very careful since pennies are choking hazards for kids who still put thing in their mouths.

Original Post 5/4/09