Make money maths meaningful with our Perfect Pet Shop: Adding Dollars Money Activity! This hands-on resource invites students to explore adding whole dollar amounts using realistic scenarios and engaging pet-themed visuals. Through purposeful play, students build fluency, confidence, and understanding of addition strategies as they shop for adorable pet shop items.

Students select two (or more) item cards from the pet shop, each with a labelled dollar price, and place them on their mat. Using printable or real money, they match the prices with notes and coins, then calculate the total and record the number sentence on a recording sheet. This activity brings real-world maths into the classroom and provides plenty of opportunity for talk, reasoning, and collaborative learning.

Perfect Pet Shop is ideal for individual use, partner work, or small group rotations. With built-in differentiation and flexible components, this resource fits perfectly into your financial literacy unit or maths groups focused on addition.

Key Learning Outcomes:

• ✅ Add whole dollar amounts with increasing accuracy and fluency
• ✅ Recognise and match notes and coins to written values
• ✅ Apply mental computation strategies for efficient addition
• ✅ Develop real-world financial understanding through simulated shopping
• ✅ Record mathematical thinking using number sentences

What’s Included:

• Detailed teacher instructions and setup guide
• Printable pet shop mats (can be enlarged to A3)
• Item cards featuring prices in whole dollar amounts
• Money pieces - notes and coins for matching
• Recording sheets for writing number sentences and totals

Materials Needed:

• Printed mats, item cards, and money pieces (laminate for reuse)
• Scissors and small containers for sorting pieces
• Optional: play money for a more tactile experience
• Whiteboards or worksheets for extended number work

How to Use:

1. Provide each student or pair with a mat, item cards, and money pieces.
2. Students select two or more item cards and place them on their mat.
3. They collect matching money pieces and add the values together.
4. Students record their number sentence on the included sheet.
5. Repeat with new combinations or extend the task using more items or cents.

Ideas for Classroom Use:

• 💡 Use in maths groups during a unit on money or addition strategies.
• 💡 Set up as a role-play station with a shopkeeper and customers.
• 💡 Create an interactive display by having students pin their item combinations and totals to a shared class mat.
• 💡 Send home printed versions of item cards for continued practice with families.
• 💡 Use it as a formative assessment task to observe student strategy use and reasoning.

Top Teacher Tips:

• 💛 Print item cards and mats on thick card and laminate for durability.
• 💛 Store all pieces in clearly labelled envelopes or tubs for easy reuse.
• 💛 Model addition strategies such as counting on or partitioning before beginning.
• 💛 Encourage mathematical talk - have students explain how they calculated their total and why they used certain coins or notes.

Perfect Pet Shop is a delightful way to build addition confidence through real-life application. With adorable graphics, purposeful play, and built-in flexibility, this resource is a must-have for your financial maths toolkit!