Fun With Money

Brandy and I both have children in the first grade and with the first grade, comes learning about money. Now every kid loves money and loves to spend money but they don't really understand the concept of money. My son, who is 10, always answers my "we don't have the money for that right now" with "Mom, use your credit card. Or write a check". Oh, don't we wish it were that easy?

Well, learning about money and how it works can be very confusing. Brandy and I have talked quite often about how tricky such an easy concept can be. From learning about pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters. To adding up different coins to come up with a total.

I saw this great idea on a show here in Utah called Good Things Utah. There is a woman who has a blog called Smmart Ideas. She had GREAT ideas for teaching about money.

One idea was to take a simple ice tray and dump out a piggy bank and have the child sort the money from the piggy bank into the different holes in the ice tray. I thought that was a wonderful way to teach sorting.



The next thing she did was play "I Spy" with the dollar bill. You have your child hold the bill while you say such things as "I spy an "L" ", and they would have to search the bill for the "L". She did rubbings by taping the coins to the back of paper and then rubbed the other side with a crayon. It was amazing.

My very favorite thing she did was set up a little "store" with the childs toys and placed big price tags with different quantities and had the child use his money to come up with the amount. This way it is fun and they are learning while playing! What is better than that. I am now a big fan of her blog and look forward to doing some of her great ideas with my kids.