I’ve been rather concerned about my elder son’s blase attitude towards buying. He wasn’t always like this but it is starting to seem as if he just wants everything and doesn’t really care for it after we’ve bought it. So I figured it was time to teach him about the value of money and I’ve discovered this program that’s pretty interesting - PlayMoolah.
If anyone else is interested in teaching their children about managing money, this is an interesting program to check out. I’ve written about it on my blog:
That looks like a fun game with lots of practical applications. However I have found that what is teaching my DD(5) the most about money is for her to get pocket money - we have been teaching coins during math, but she learns more when allowed to spend them. We also taught her greater than, less than and equal to and she now goes around checking prices by herself by informing me what is cheaper though she doesn’t always want to buy the cheapest. We have made addition simpler for her by ignoring the cents or rounding up for her before she adds so she can work out what she can afford and we will work on getting the correct change a bit later - we play shop at home too to reinforce this. Our neighbourhood is not safe enough for her to earn her own money that way, so we will have to be a little more entrepeneurial when it comes to helping her think of ways to make money. I think adding this programme to the real life pocket money lessons would make things even more applicable for her and enable her to see the bigger picture too. Thanks for recommending it.