Play "Memory" with loose change while waiting in line

From Tom ("devoted Parenthacker and Jersey exile"):

While standing in line at the grocery store the other day I stumbled upon a Parent Hack I'm rather proud of.  My daughter is almost 4 and very fond of playing Memory, so when we got stuck on a fairly busy Sunday line waiting for checkout I took a handful of the new quarters and sorted them into pairs by State (you can also have a pair of the normal "eagles" and the 1976 Bicentennial quarters as well).  Turning them heads-up so they all looked alike, I spread them out on my palm and we played Memory until it was our turn in line. 

I was surprised at how quickly the time flew by - we couldn't have played more than two or three full games, just enough for it to keep my daughter's interest!

Related: Pocketmod for printable, portable entertainment

Comments

[Duane]

Other games you can play with spare change include shapes (pretty easy to make triangles, squares, circles and so on) as well as various forms of counting and math games. In particular I liked to combine the two, for instance by showing my daughter (who is 4) how have 3 rows of 2 pennies makes the same shape as having 2 rows of 3 pennies - and both add up to 6 pennies.