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Making Change Worksheets

This page makes free printable making change worksheets on demand: press the button and you get a new sheet of 20 problems with a matching answer key, ready for US Letter or A4 paper. The current sheet starts with problems like “You pay $10.00 for an item costing $1.67. Change =” and “You pay $10.00 for an item costing $7.93. Change =”, and the answers ($8.33 and $2.07) are printed on the key so marking takes about a minute.

📄 MAKING CHANGE WORKSHEETS — A NEW SHEET EVERY TIME YOU PRESS THE BUTTON
🎲 New set of problems

‘New set of problems’ opens the generator in its own tab. There you can change the problem count and turn the answer key on or off. ‘Print or save as PDF’ opens the print dialog — choose Save as PDF in the printer list to keep the file. The sheet fits US Letter and A4, and the answer key prints on its own page.

What this worksheet practises

Making change is subtraction that most children can already do and often cannot apply, because a question like “You pay $10.00 for an item costing $7.93. Change =” adds a step they have to work out for themselves.

Lining up the decimal points is the whole technique. Money problems are where children who skip that step find out why it matters.

Money is decimals with a reason to care. An item like “You pay $10.00 for an item costing $1.67. Change =” is a two-place decimal calculation, and the answer $8.33 has to be exact because money always is.

This sheet uses notes of $5, $10, $20 and $50, written with two decimal places throughout, which is the form on every price tag and receipt, as the item “You pay $10.00 for an item costing $7.57. Change =” on this sheet shows.

In US classrooms these making change worksheets are commonly aligned with the money and measurement expectations for this grade, though the exact wording varies from state to state.

Sample problems from the current sheet

These six come from the sheet loaded on this page. Press the button and the numbers change, but the shape stays the same (notes of $5, $10, $20 and $50).
#ProblemAnswerWhat to check
1You pay $10.00 for an item costing $1.67. Change =$8.33Watch for: subtracting the wrong way for change
2You pay $10.00 for an item costing $7.93. Change =$2.07Check: ignoring the dollar sign in the answer
3You pay $20.00 for an item costing $2.39. Change =$17.61Look at: rounding to the nearest dollar mid-calculation
4You pay $50.00 for an item costing $6.25. Change =$43.75Ask about: treating dollars and cents as two separate numbers
5You pay $10.00 for an item costing $7.57. Change =$2.43Watch for: forgetting to add everything
6You pay $10.00 for an item costing $3.14. Change =$6.86Check: dropping the second decimal place

Try one together first

Here is one worked through. “You pay $10.00 for an item costing $7.93. Change =” gives $2.07. If your child arrives somewhere other than $2.07 on “You pay $10.00 for an item costing $7.93. Change =”, look at the working rather than the answer: nearly every wrong result comes from a skipped step, not an unknown fact.

The item “You pay $10.00 for an item costing $7.93. Change =” is worth doing slowly. The answer to “You pay $10.00 for an item costing $7.93. Change =” is $2.07, and the route to it is the route every other problem on this sheet takes — which is why the sheet has 20 of them rather than one.

Three common mistakes and what to do about them

How to run this as a 10-minute daily drill

  1. If two days in a row come out under 10 minutes with everything correct, that is the signal to move up: either numbers bigger than “You pay $10.00 for an item costing $1.67. Change =” uses, or the next skill in the sequence.
  2. Use a pencil, not a pen. Children working on working out change rethink far more often when erasing is allowed, and you get to see exactly where the rethinking happened on an item like “You pay $20.00 for an item costing $2.39. Change =”.
  3. Run the sheet at the same time each day. Ten focused minutes before dinner beats an hour on Sunday, because working out change is a recall skill: “You pay $10.00 for an item costing $1.67. Change =” has to arrive without being worked out, and recall is built by frequency.
  4. Do not raise the number of problems until the accuracy is steady. Going from 20 correct-but-slow problems to more problems only multiplies the same mistake.
  5. Keep the session to about 10 minutes. A child working at this level who is still counting on fingers will need longer than that on a line like “You pay $10.00 for an item costing $1.67. Change =”, and that is fine: the timer is a measurement, never a punishment.

About the answer key

The answer key is generated with the worksheet, not written by hand, so it always matches the sheet in front of you — “You pay $10.00 for an item costing $1.67. Change =” is listed as $8.33, “You pay $10.00 for an item costing $7.93. Change =” as $2.07, and so on down the page.

Keys are produced by the same code that produces the questions, so a mismatch between question and answer is not possible on these sheets.

How to print this worksheet

Portrait orientation is what the sheet is designed for. Landscape works but wastes about a third of the paper, so leave the orientation alone unless you have a reason.

The sheet is laid out to fit one page on both US Letter and A4. Leave the browser scaling at 100% and turn headers and footers off, and the 20 problems land inside the margins on either paper size.

Frequently asked questions

Are these amounts realistic?
They are generated in a plausible range for everyday items so the arithmetic feels like something rather than nothing.
Are these worksheets really free?
Yes, completely. The page is supported by advertising, not by subscriptions, so there is no limit on how many making change worksheets you print.
Is money just decimals?
Mathematically yes, with exactly two places. What makes it different is that the context gives children a reason to be exact, which is why money problems often improve decimal accuracy.
Can I change how many problems are on the page?
Yes — the generator takes 10, 20 or 30 problems. Twenty is the default because it fits one page and suits a 10-minute drill.

Keep the finished making change worksheets in date order — the drop in time across ten sheets is the clearest progress report you will get.

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Free printable math worksheets from a working math academy director in Korea. Problems come from our own code, not from a published workbook. Every sheet prints on US Letter or A4 with its answer key. All worksheets · Worksheet generator · Korean site
Last updated: 2026-09-13