Euro Sense

Today we are studying French money. France used to have its own currency, but now it has joined the European Union and so they use the Euro. The European bills are called Euros. Euros come in different colors and sizes.

The 500 Euro is purple and is the largest sized bill. (We haven’t seen the real large bills, just pictures of them in a book.) The 200 Euro is yellow and it is the second largest bill. The 100 Euro is green and it is the third largest bill. The fifty is orange and it is the fourth largest bill.

The 20 Euro is blue and it is the third smallest bill. The 10 Euro is red and it is the second smallest bill. The 5 Euro is black and it is the smallest bill. These smaller bills are the ones we typically use. All of these smaller bills have a shiny silver strip on the right side of the bill.

There are lots of different Euro coins! The one and two Euro coins are made of two kinds of metal: gold and silver. The 2 Euro coin is gold in the middle and silver on the outside. On the 1 Euro coin it’s the opposite. Also, the 2 Euro coins are larger than the 1 Euor coin.

There are five more kinds of coins. There is the 50 cent (cent means Eurocent, or centimes in the old French franc), which are gold and heavier than a quarter. It’s Worth about 75 cents in the United States. There is a 20 cent Gold coin and a 10 cent gold coin. Finally, there is a 5 cent copperand a small 1 cent a small 2 cent copper coin. European money is worth more than American money.

We use euros everyday. Almost every morning we go to the Boulangerie (the bakery) and buy one or two baguettes. A baguette costs 80 cents, which is about 1 American dollar. At the grocery store we like to buy fish (poisson). The other day we bought some salmon (saumon) which cost 6.95 euros. We have found it easy to spend euro money