Penny
Coins are worth different amounts; you count money by adding up how much each is worth
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Penny is a magpie who loves shiny coins — but not just for shining. Penny knows a secret many forget: coins are not all worth the same. "A penny is one, a nickel is five, a dime is ten, a quarter is twenty-five," Penny chatters. "You don't count how many coins — you count how much they're worth. Add up the values, and you know what you've got."
Down at the seed stand, two chipmunks, Nutkin and Bram, are squabbling over a trade. "You have MORE coins than me, so give me some!" says Nutkin, who has five pennies. "But mine are worth more!" says Bram, who has two dimes. Neither one can prove it, and both are getting cross.
"Let's count by worth, not by number," says Penny, hopping down. "Nutkin, your five pennies — one, two, three, four, five cents. That's five cents in all. Bram, your two dimes — ten, twenty. That's twenty cents." The chipmunks blink. Bram, with only two coins, has far more money than Nutkin with five.
"So more coins doesn't mean more money," says Nutkin slowly, and to Nutkin's surprise, it's not upsetting — it's just how coins work. "A dime is worth ten of my pennies," Nutkin adds. "That's why two of them beat my five!" Now both chipmunks can see exactly what each has, fair and square. The squabble simply runs out of steam.
Penny helps them trade properly — a dime for ten pennies, even-steven — and both chipmunks trot off happy, each knowing they got a fair deal. A warm, settled, everything's-square feeling glows in them both. And Penny, delighted, lines up the coins by value in a neat shiny row, smallest worth to largest, and admires how fair the world can be when you count it right.
The MeasurePals ensemble
Penny is part of MeasurePals's distributed-narrative cast. Each character embodies a different curricular primitive; together they teach the full subject.
