Showing posts with label money. Show all posts
Showing posts with label money. Show all posts

Saturday, October 26, 2013

Smart Money Kids

Besides worksheets, there are numerous imaginative ways to teach young children to recognize coins and their value.

One simple activity is to have a small jar of coins on the kitchen counter.  For lunch or a snack, write out the menu, restaurant-style with prices marked (under $1 to begin) and ask them to count out the correct change.

Quickly they will catch on to that, so for dessert, add a cookie, which helps them learn to add money mentally.

As they get older, you can make the amounts harder to figure by adding state sales tax, and finally a tip for the "waitress mom".

From the kitchen, your money lessons can move to the grocery store, where you allow them to purchase a small piece of candy or gum.  Learning to figure the exact amount, including tax, challenges their mental processes.

Here is another fun resource utilizing the poem "Smart" by Shel Silverstein:

http://www.fi.edu/pieces/knox/smart.htm