You've learned how to solve classification word problems. Now we'll work on similar problems using money. It will be easier for you to solve these word problems because you're familiar with coins. You spend money almost every day, so it's important to know how to deal with coin word problems.
Here's a problem that we have to make a number family for:
Bryan has nickels and quarters. He has 45 cents in nickels. He has 95 cents in all. How many cents does he have in quarters?
The word that tells about all the things in this problem is "cents." What words do we write for the lesser (smaller) numbers? We write "nickels" and "quarters." And what do we write for all of the cents? We write "all."
Try this new problem:
Carla has dimes and nickels. She has 60 cents in dimes. She has 35 cents in nickels. How many cents does she have in all?
What word tells about all the things in this problem? That word is "cents." What words do we write for the lesser numbers? We write "dimes" and "nickels." And what do we write for all the cents? We write "all." Now we can replace the words with numbers. We put 60 in for dimes and 35 in for nickels. We add to figure out the missing number.
The number problem is:
Now you know that Carla has 95 cents in all.
