Money, Cents, and Great Web Sites, Too!

Note: For money games and Web sites please scroll down to the bottom.

Children learn more about money through real-life experiences than they do through worksheets. If you think about it, most people (including children) could care less about other people’s money; children really don’t care about “…how much Sue has in her piggy bank after buying a candy bar for $1.50.”

Using real money—especially money that the children have in their own “piggy banks”—is a very effective way to teach how to add and subtract money.

Here is a real-life example (one that cost me a lot of money because I underestimated how smart my son was!):

My son already knew the value of all of the coins and bills by the time he was five-years old. He also knew how to count money. (See Web sites below if your children are learning the value of coins and bills or are learning how to count money.)

Anyway, a few years ago my son wanted a Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP), which, at that time, cost $300. There was NO WAY my husband or I was going to spend that kind of money on a toy for a seven-year old. So, thinking I was brilliant, I told my son that if he saved up half the money, then we would pay for the other half and he would get his PSP. His allowance was around $4 a week, so I didn’t give the PSP another thought for several months until….

My son came to me one day and said, “I have saved $150 for half of the PSP. Can we please go buy it today?”

I was shocked! “How did you save that much money?” I asked.

“Well,” he calmly explained, “I added how much money I had in my toy bank when you told me that I needed $150. I had $7.51 saved up. Then I subtracted $7.51 from $150 to find out how much I needed to save for the PSP. I saved all of my allowance and all the money I received for Christmas and my birthday. Every time I received more money, I subtracted it from the amount I needed for the PSP. Today’s allowance finally got me to $150.” He pulled out wads of bills and coins and there it was….$150.

Needless to say, we headed to the store and with his money and ours, we picked up a PSP. My son is ten-years old now, and I am still in shock that we dished out that kind of money—but a promise is a promise.

If you really want to teach your children about money, start with the money they have, tie it in with something they really want and the children will do the math by themselves—trust me, I learned the hard way!

Children are like us adults: We care about the money we have, we know what we want and how much it costs, and we do the math to figure out what we have to save to get what we want.

Web sites that teach children about money and math:

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