National Coin Week
Happy National Coin Week 2009! National Coin Week was started to help people get to know about numismatics...the hobby and study of coins and paper money.
In 1983, the President set aside the third week in April as a time for people to think about coins. Why? Because collecting coins can help you learn about science, history, and important people, places, and events. Besides, lots of people find that collecting coins is just plain fun!
This year's theme is "Lincoln's Legacy: A Nation United." What history can you learn from coins? National Coin Week is a good time to find out...and H.I.P. Pocket Change is the perfect place!
Fitting Festivities
In 2009, National Coin Week will run from April 19 to 25. To celebrate, your H.I.P. Pocket Change Pals will pick an activity for you for each day of the week. Join the fun by coming back each day to see the day's pick!
Today, Plinky wants to share the new Native American $1 Coin Program with you. In 2009, the familiar image of Sacagawea is backed with a planting theme called "The Three Sisters of Agriculture." Click over to the Coins and Medals section to learn about this ancient innovation in Native American farming.
Then you can check out the new game called Hoop and Darts. This two-player game, based on real Native American games, is on the Games page.
Goldie directs you to today's pages. The first page reveals the 2009 one-cent coin designs. These four designs, about the life of President Abraham Lincoln, are presented in the Coins and Medals section. It's a great source for this year's theme, "Lincoln's Legacy: A Nation United."
Reading about these penny designs will get you ready to play Lincoln Words on the Games page. Lincoln Words is a word find game with some twists, depending on the level you play. But on all three levels, you just click and drag to select the word when you find it...that is, IF you find it!
Peter the Mint Eagle presents the activity for today. He has been busy adding lots of bells and whistles to his invention, the Time Machine. You can join him and Plinky for some ringing and tooting on the trip they added since last year!
On this latest adventure, Plinky's coin inquiries take them to Philadelphia for the 200th anniversary of the United States. What's going on there and then? Come and find out!
Nero's activity for Wednesday draws your attention to the District of Columbia and United States Territories Quarters Program, a one-year program for 2009. During this year, six different quarter designs will be released. Each one is described and shown on the 2009 Quarters page.
And here's a way to have fun with these new designs...by coloring them online! Just click here for the Painters' Studio activity. All six of the quarters in this series are there for you to color and print out!
Bill the Mint Buffalo, our favorite history buff, would like to show you some Historic Highlights in the life of the United States Mint. This is an interactive timeline of history that takes you from the creation of the United States Mint in 1792 through to the 21st Century.
How many cities in this country have been home to coin-making operations? When a US Mint facility wasn't used for making coins, what was done there? These questions and more can be answered when you click a date range, then hover over a dot to read its entry. The timeline was given a new look and updated since it first appeared in 2002.
Like to color? We thought so. That's why Inspector Collector collected coloring pages for you! ALL 50 quarters from the 50 State Quarters® Program are there for you to download, print, and color as well as the six quarters from the District of Columbia Quarters Program, the four pennies from the 2009 Lincoln Bicentennial One Cent Coin Program, the dollar from the Native American $1 Coin Program, and the four new dollars from the Presidential $1 Coin Program!
Of course, the other free pages are still there as well: the H.I.P. Pocket Change Pals, circulating coins, Westward Journey nickels, and more. With all these pages to color, you can color until you run out of crayons! But don't worry; then you can go to Cents of Color or Painters' Studio and color all the quarters online!
For this last day of National Coin Week, your friend Flip would like to introduce you to the Kids' Guide to H.I.P. Pocket Change. Having only 7 days to work with, the Pals couldn't show you everything there is to see and do on this site, but the Kids' Guide can help to highlight anything they missed.
The Guide divides the site up into six categories: Action, Adventure, Art, Puzzles, Facts, and Collecting, each category with its own icon and the icons lined up along the top of the page. When you click one of the icons, a description comes up to explain the category, and some other icons appear that link to the features in that category. Then you can mouse over an icon to read what it's about and click the icon to go to that feature...or just move on to another icon. Either way, it's a great way to get a quick view of the action on H.I.P. Pocket Change!