Games to Teach Children About Money.
Posted: May 20th, 2011 | Author: Joe | Filed under: Saving, spending, Tips | Tags: Games, money, Teaching Children, Tips | 2 Comments »It’s never too early to start learning about money. In fact, the earlier parents begin to teach children about money and money management, the better off everyone would be. Children who learn proper money management skills early in life are less likely to end up as boomerang kids, living in their parent’s basement at 27 years old.
Here are some ideas for games to teach young children about money and basic money skills. best of all, they’re free, interactive and imaginative – no computers, television or board games here!
Let’s get started…
Money Games for Toddlers
Children are naturally inquisitive. Just because they are too young to learn simple math and grasp the beauty of compounding interest doesn’t mean they can’t start to learn about money. Begin with the basics.
Grab a penny, a nickel, a dime and a quarter. Teach your toddler the names of each coin. Engage him in tactile interaction with the coins – get a small piece of Tupperware, or a box and practice taking the coins out and putting them back in. Toddlers LOVE this kind of repetitive activity.
The mind of a toddler is like a sponge. You don’t need to force feed them the names and quiz them, flashcard style. Simply holding up a penny and saying, “Penny” before placing it in the container is often time enough to create that bond between the name of the item and the item itself.
Start small with 1 or 2 coins and work your way up. Ask your toddler to grab the penny or nickel. Make a big deal when he gets it right. It may not seem like much, but it’ll be a fun game for him and the positive reinforcement will encourage him to new heights.
Image by Timeout Kids.
Games for Preschoolers
Once your child has progressed beyond the name and coin recognition stage, and has moved into coloring, drawing and general crayon work, start adding more detail to the coin game. Start teaching the value of the coins, replacing the names with the monetary equivalent. For example, instead of saying “where’s the nickel?” you can say, “Where’s the 5 cent piece” or “Can you find 5 cents?”
While few preschoolers can handle the math required for making change for a dollar, you can start them on the path with simple counting games. Using pennies, you can introduce your child to the concept that 5 pennies equal 1 nickel, and so forth. It’s little more than counting pennies, but it’s a beginning and it’s important.
If your child is a math star, then by all means introduce counting by fives and tens (i.e. nickels and dimes). The point is to start small and work up. You’re not grooming your progeny for MENSA here, but rather laying the ground work for interest in learning and a solid financial background later in life.
Draw a circle for each coin, label it with its cent value and have your child color the circles in with whatever colors they want. Make sure each circle is roughly the right size in relation to the other circles (i.e. the dime should be smaller than the nickel..).
Ask your child to match the coin to the correct circle, using verbal cues. For example: ask, “where does the penny go?”, without pointing.
This will force the child to recognize the penny out of the possible coins laid out before him, and also challenge him to match the coin with the picture he colored.
Games for 5-8 year olds
Play shopkeeper. My middle child is 5 and she loves to play store owner. She takes her stuffed animal collection and spreads it all over the room, and pretends it’s her pet shop.
The rest of the family then takes turns “buying” a pet. It’s great imaginative play, and it provides the opportunity for learning about exchanging money for goods, and making change. It increases money awareness and math skills and best of all – it’s interactive. There is no television or computer to lean on mentally! It’s pure imagination and role play, which then lends itself to discussing and learning about all sorts of things in life – trust me! 
This kind of game can be adapted for various levels and interests. Maybe your child isn’t into pets. Maybe it’s superhero action figures, grocery store play food or race cars. Maybe it’s a service, and not a product based store. You can play restaurant – kids love play food and pretend cooking.
You can also adjust the complexity of math and money management skills to the age level. For example, simple whole numbers for the 5 year age set :
Owner: “That pet is $4. ”
Shopper: “Ok, great. Here’s a $5 bill.”
Owner: “Thank you. Here’s a dollar for your change.”
Or for the later ages:
Wait person: “Thank you for dining at Half-Pint Cafe. Here’s your check.” (child provides hand-written lunch check for $12.95)
Diner: “Lunch was wonderful. Thank you.” (parent provides $15 )
Wait person: “Here’s $2.05 change. Please come again.”
Diner: “Oh I will, you can be sure of it!” (parent places $2 on the table for a tip).
So what just happened here? The child learned to make proper change, and practiced his writing skills and manners.
Perhaps the child even learned what a “tip” was. There’s a world of possibilities out there. Mix it up and experiment. What happens when the diner doesn’t give enough money as payment? What happens when you’re the wait person, your child is the diner and you give incorrect change back. See if your child notices, and role play consequences. This is a great opportunity to teach lessons about what’s right and what’s wrong regarding money and how we use it.
Some final thoughts
The earlier you start, the easier it will be to engage your child.
Include the whole family – you might be surprised at what siblings (older and younger) will come up with!
Older siblings can sometimes have an easier time of joining in if they are engaged in the teaching aspect. Get them involved in helping to teach the younger ones and they may learn a thing or two also – or come up with a new variation that may teach something you didn’t think needed to be taught.
Content in this post was inspired by Money Doesn’t Grow On Trees: A Parent’s Guide to Raising Financially Responsible Children
I definitely had a piggy bank as a little kid and loved counting all the coins in it. That piggy bank was probably the reason I’m so interested in personal finance
[...] believe that there is no such thing as “too young”, which is why I wrote about games to teach children about money a while back. That post focuses on the toddler and elementary school age kids, but I don’t [...]