Our kids like to see and play with coins, especially coins from other countries. Unfortunately, we don't quite trust the kids alone enough yet to be confident that they will 1) not swallow any of them, and 2) not lose any of them. Instead of bringing out the coin box every time we get the urge to look at coins, we decided to make some pencil rubbings and put them on the map in the kid's room.

Get together some materials:

• Various coins
• Paper (I suspect thinner paper works better, but I just used some scraps)
• Pencil
• Scissors
• Non-slip mat (these are sold in the kitchen wares section of most department stores, it's just a foam mesh that you can cut with scissors)
• A map (optional)

Step 1: Make Some Pencil Rubbings

On your non-slip mat, place the coin that you want to copy, and place the paper on top of it. Hold the edges of the paper down tight, and as even as you can.

Then, use the pencil almost flat against the paper, rub back and forth, only pressing gently. This should transfer the image to the paper.

When the image is there, cut out the ones you like, and tape them to your map!