Hi everyone! I am Liam! Have you ever looked inside a piggy bank and wondered why some coins are tiny and silver, while others are big and gold? Or why some money is made of metal and some feels like soft plastic? Today, we are going on a Canadian Money Adventure! We are going to explore every coin and every bill used in our beautiful country, from the tiny penny in our history books to the big brown one hundred dollar bill. Knowing your money is like having a superpower at the store!I am Maya! I love the animals on our coins. Did you know that our money tells a story about Canada? We have beavers, caribou, and even polar bears hidden right in our pockets! We are going to learn how to identify them by their pictures, their colors, and their sizes. Even the edges of the coins have special secrets to tell us!I am Chloe! I am going to show you the rainbow of bills we use for bigger things. In Canada, our bills are made of polymer, which is a very fancy type of plastic. This means they are hard to rip and can even get wet without being ruined. We will look at the bright blue, purple, green, red, and brown colors that help us tell them apart in a flash!And I am Noah! I like the history of our money. We will look at some coins that are very rare, like the fifty-cent piece, and the copper penny that your parents used to use. It is important to understand how all these pieces fit together. Let us start our tour with the silver-colored coins that we use every single day!First up is the nickel. The nickel is worth five cents. When you hold it, you will notice it has a smooth edge. On one side, it features a very famous Canadian animal—the beaver! The beaver is a symbol of hard work. Next is the smallest coin of all, the dime. Even though the dime is the smallest in size, it is worth more than the nickel! It is worth ten cents. It has a beautiful sailing ship on it called the Bluenose. If you feel the edge of a dime, it is bumpy or ridged, not smooth like the nickel. Then we have the quarter. The quarter is worth twenty-five cents. It is larger than the nickel and the dime, and it has a caribou with magnificent antlers on it. If you have four quarters, you have one whole dollar! It also has a bumpy edge like the dime. Comparing these three is easy: the nickel is the five-cent beaver, the tiny dime is the ten-cent ship, and the big quarter is the twenty-five-cent caribou.Now, let us look at the heavyweights! These are the coins that are worth one dollar or more. The loonie is our one-dollar coin. It is gold-colored and has eleven flat sides, which makes it feel very unique. It gets its name from the loon, a water bird that is shown swimming on the back. If you have two loonies, you have the same value as our next coin: the toonie! The toonie is worth two dollars. It is very easy to spot because it has two different colors—a silver ring on the outside and a gold circle in the middle. It features a large, fluffy polar bear standing on an ice floe. We also have a rare treasure called the fifty-cent piece. It is a large silver coin with the Canadian Coat of Arms. You might not see it often, but it is worth exactly half of a loonie. Remember, the gold loonie is one, and the two-colored toonie is two!When you want to buy something bigger, like a birthday present or a new pair of shoes, you will likely use bills. These are vibrant and full of cool technology! The five-dollar bill is bright blue. If you look closely at the back, you will see a giant robot arm called the Canadarm2, which was built in Canada to help out in space! Next is the ten-dollar bill, which is purple. On the newer ten-dollar bills, the picture stands up vertically! It shows a brave woman named Viola Desmond. The twenty-dollar bill is green and is the one you see most often. It shows the Vimy Memorial, a very important monument. These bills have transparent windows with holograms that change color when you tilt them. This helps make sure the money is real and very hard to copy.Now we are getting to the big ones! The fifty-dollar bill is bright red. It shows a powerful ship called an icebreaker, which is used to clear paths through frozen water in the North. Finally, the biggest bill of all is the one hundred-dollar bill. It is brown and features a scientist and a microscope, celebrating the discovery of insulin in Canada. When we compare values, it is like a big puzzle. One hundred-dollar bill is the same as having ten ten-dollar bills! Or, one fifty-dollar bill is the same as five ten-dollar bills. The colors are like a code: Blue is five, Purple is ten, Green is twenty, Red is fifty, and Brown is one hundred. Always check the color and the number in the corner!Wait, we cannot forget about the copper coin! This is the penny. The penny is worth only one cent and has two maple leaves on it. Canada stopped making pennies in twenty-thirteen because they cost more to make than they were worth! Even though you cannot spend them in stores today, they are very useful for learning how to count by ones. In math, we use the penny as our base. It takes five pennies to make a nickel and ten pennies to make a dime. We also have a special silver dollar that is very large and shiny, usually kept by collectors. Whether it is a tiny beaver or a giant icebreaker ship, every piece of Canadian money is a work of art that helps us trade and save for our dreams!We have learned so much today! We know that the tiny dime is worth ten, the beaver nickel is five, and the caribou quarter is twenty-five. We know the loonie is one and the polar bear toonie is two. And we know our rainbow of bills starts at the blue five and goes all the way up to the brown one hundred. A great tip for being a master of money is to practice sorting coins at home. See if you can tell them apart just by feeling their edges with your eyes closed! Or try to match the colors of the bills to the things you want to buy. You are now a Canadian Money Explorer! Keep practicing your counting, and we will see you in our next adventure where we learn how to make change at the store!
