{Money Matters} Money Concept for the Little Ones

During my early childhood, I was quite a blur kid who had no understanding of money value. I just knew I must not simply spend as those were my old pa's hard earn money and I had my piggy bank to save my extra allowances, but other than that I was clueless how to conserve or make good use of my money. I learnt to manage my money and investing them only after I started my first job, some how school did not and still does not teaches money management, and in my opinion it would be too late to wait till college years. So, I decided to take this matter into my own hands and starts my little ones early.

After much research, reading and applying with my little boy, I am happy to share the tips on teaching money concept to the young kids.

Here's how we did in our family.

First, be friend with numbers

#1 Begin with numbers & counting.

How can a child understand money matters without knowing how to count 1,2,3 and simple addition or subtraction? So, start with counting with fingers, small pebbles, beans, biscuits etc, everyday objects can be the counting tool. Even Cherios cereal. :)

Then we made cards to teach them simple counting. 1+1, 1+2, 1+3, 1+4, 1+5, then proceed to 2+1, 2+2, 2+3, 2+4, 2+5. We never rushed it when my little boy was under 4 years old, just kept the counting under 5, and only 1 set of numbers at a time. When he is used to the concept of addition only we gradually introduced him to larger number like 6,7,8,9,10.

#2 Introduce them to coins and notes

When my little one was around 2-3 years old, we used coins for sorting game; 5¢, 10¢, 20¢ and 50¢ all comes in different sizes. Then I introduced them the value of each coins, which is more and which is less. Notes can wait till 4yo onward, you know, when I have the assurance that they are not interested in tearing paper anymore.  :)

#3 Get a piggy bank, cultivate habit of saving

Start by learning to save and that the money saved can be used to buy things they like, so in a way it's delay gratification - they have to wait till it's time to get their reward. 

I give my little boy whatever coins I had in my pocket when I got home from work, and he will happily drops the coins into his piggy bank. 

I used to own those traditional porcelain coin boxes when I was a child, and every new year eve my mom will break the coin box with a hammer, I would then excitedly count my fortune and bring them to the bank. I still recall those moments when I peeked into my bank book balance and feeling happy that I just got richer. :)

** never leave the little ones alone with the coins as they can be chocking hazard **

  

Make it Fun

#4 Introduce books & number games

We got few sets of books and card board games at home. From the puzzle maths game from Toy R' Us, to the book / games on concept of Money as part of our Phinken education series. All these trained little ones to do mental arithmetic where counting is done without using paper & pencil. It took time to train but we always make it fun.

#5 Monopoly! What better games to introduce concept of money to little ones than using the good old monopoly game? Apart from the classic game, there is a children version and also localised Malaysian version (with name such as Kedai Telekom or Indah Water). Whichever your choice is, Monopoly is a great game to teach the concept of money (buying, selling), basic of investment (property renting, upgrade, tax etc), and that life is full of uncertainties (the Chance and Community cards, arrgg... I always have bad luck with those!)

My little boy loves the Monopoly game and he is a much prudent investor than I am - he will count the amount of cash he has on hand and choose the property selectively. Soon he will be a smarter investor than the parent (or I certainly hope so) 

Make it REAL

#6 Take them grocery shopping

Prepare a shopping list, write down clearly what are the items to purchase and the quantity. Let little one picks each item for you. It's a good chance to teach basic skill like reading the price tag, checking the label for the expiry date; It also gives the little one a sense of responsibility by helping to carry out the chores and understand the value of our groceries. 

My boy will be helping to "hunt" the listed item whenever we do our grocery shopping, it's like a mission to him. From rather lost and slow in the beginning, he is now having better understanding of each section (the supermarket's layout) and can locate the items much faster. Each time he cross out an item on the grocery list, he was grinning in pride. :)

#7 Get them a wallet

What better way to empower by entrusting little one with a wallet? Yup, I made a kid's wallet for my little boy, completed with coin, card and notes compartments. Of course you can always buy one for your child. The point is, let him feel the ownership & responsibility of looking after his own money. I let him pay for simple purchases like bread, a doughnut etc, where only small change are involved and he only has about RM$7 in there - mixture of RM$1, RM$5, and coins. Initially he was rather nervous, but he is getting much at ease now that he is able to handle the counting a lot better. 

So, that is all about it, folks. The tips on teaching money concept for young kids. 

If you have successfully introduced all the above to your little ones, continuously teach them to handle money matters in real life. It is better they make mistakes early in life under our guidance, than making mistakes later in life when it is beyond our knowledge, right? 

Do share with me on the methods you apply with your kiddos, I would love to hear from you!

Cheers.

Copyrights © Pui Hua and Fun With Little Ones, 2012 - present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of any materials/photos within this website without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Pui Hua and Fun With Little Ones with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Fun Abacus Game with Cherios 小小算盘游戏

With 2 young toddlers, keeping them to sit still when having their breakfast seems like a mission impossible. Somehow my little girl always want to try her elder brother's portion and end up creating a mess or a frustrated baby.

So when I saw this idea while surfing, I though its worth a try, since all I need is some Wholemeal Cherios and Spaghetti.

It helps them to practice counting as well as work out the eye-hand coordination with small objects. It may seem easy to us adult, but its quite a challenge for the little fingers.

The elder brother was watching cartoon at first and finally couldn't resist to help up and eventually arranged all Cherios into each spaghetti sticks. :)

I quite like this game, it's simple, low cost and completely safe for little ones; just have to ensure you break the spaghetti sticks to shorter length.

Fun time can be simple and low cost.. Cheers!



Copyrights © Pui Hua and Fun With Little Ones, 2012 - present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of any materials/photos within this website without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Pui Hua and Fun With Little Ones with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Lets Start Counting!

Apart from creativity and curiosity, which is attitude to life, there are 2 learning that I put emphasize on -- language and mathematics. These are the basic for learning greater things in life so I really think its important to build a strong foundation since young.

Whether you like it or not, mathematics is so important in our everyday life. From simple tasks like grocery shopping, ordering food, going places (taking bus or lift) to serious stuff like bank savings, financial investment, property purchases and even tax payment... its all about numbers, numbers, numbers. So, big guy and I had worked together in cultivating interest in numbers to Ethan when he was as young as 8 months old.

Ethan, just turned 3 yo, playing with simple math cards

Here are the different tools and techniques we used along the way. Some are ready purchased, some DIY. Choose whichever methods that work for your little ones, but what most important is always make learning fun & interactive. I strongly believe these are the keys to cultivate a kid who enjoys learning.


Start with the Basic - Counting with Abacus
We got this abacus from IKEA to teach simple counting from 1-10. Baby Claire loved to play with the colorful beads, she turned the beads around and laughed about it. I let her be but at the same time, will count the bead one by one as she watched on.

For her elder brother, we used this to teach the concept of addition, e.g. 1 bead + 1 bead = 2. 10 beads + 10 beads = 20 and etc

Baby Claire having fun with the abacus

Basic Counting with Dots
I got these dots cards from Popular book store and flashed them to baby every day, starting from 1-5, 5-9 then slowly increase to 20, 30 etc.


For Beginner Learning: Addition and Subtraction with Pictorial Cards
When Ethan was 2.5 yo, I used this pictorial mathematics cards set to teach him the basic of addition and subtraction. Began with smaller numbers 1-5, I gradually increased to 6-10. He excelled in this after few times of teaching and most of the time he just played by himself. At time he even tried teaching me and he told me this one day, "Mommy, this is too difficult for you. Let me show you how to do this.". *eyes rolling*

Match It! Math cards from Toy 'R Us

For Advanced Learning: Addition and Subtraction with Numbers
After Ethan had grasped the basic of addition, daddy prepared these DIY cards to teach him simple addition from under 5, to under 10, then eventually moved on to bigger numbers. We taught him to use fingers for counting too.

DIY Math Cards by daddy

Interactive Learning Through Singing
Apart from the above tools, counting can be candid and as simple as using fingers, candies, finger puppets or whatever items you have with you. In fact, if you are staying in a double story house, the best time to practice counting is when going up and down the staircase. That was how Ethan learnt 1-20 as our staircase have exactly 20 steps. :)

Below are some nursery rhymes that are perfect to teach numbers:

"1 little, 2 little, 3 little fingers,
4 little, 5 little, 6 little fingers,
7 little, 8 little, 9 little fingers,
10 little small fingers"
modified from the 10 little Indian songs.


"1,2,3,4,5,
Once I caught a fish alive,
6,7,8,9,10,
Then I let it go again."


For Mandarin
"1,2,3,4,5,6,7,
我的朋友在哪里?
在这里，在这里，
我的朋友在这里"


把"朋友"换去小宝贝的名字,他一定会很开心很投入. :)


The Benefit of Doing All These?
When I first started flashing the number cards to Ethan, he was around 10 months old and apart from staring at those cards or trying to grab them from me, I couldn't tell how much he understood. I persisted regardless and he understood the numbers after turning 1 although he was not able spelled them yet.

At 18 months old,  we took Ethan for a road trip and as we were on our way home, he suddenly lifted his little fingers and started counting 1.. 2.. 3.. 4.. 5.. 6.. 7.. 8.. 9.. 10! He counted them soft and steady, although his "seven" sounded more like "swen" and his "five" sounded like "fie", Big Guy and I were so astonished beyond words. Ethan was obviously  feeling so pleased with himself that he repeated counting for a few times. Since that day onward, he just started saying those numbers without any problem.

At around 2.5 years old, while waiting for our lunch to be served at a restaurant, I gave Ethan a piece of blank paper to doodle, with some crayola pens. He suddenly wrote the number 1 - 10 and showed it to me with a shy smile. Again, he took us by surprise. His handwriting wasn't great and not all strokes are correct, but considering he wrote this on his own effort without any prior training (his preschool had not started him on writing skill yet and neither did I), I was really glad that he shown the initiative to learn and try new things on his own.

Ethan's first effort of writing numbers at 2.5 yo

So, for parents who are reading this, please don't give up on your kiddos if they are not showing you the response you wanted. Our little ones are like sponge absorbing whatever we teach them, make sure you teach them the right things and give them time to proof to you when they are ready. :)



What Next?
Keep repeating the above activities every now and then to reinforce the learning. Once we have figured out how to teach him multiplications and division, I shall update with a new post... If i can find the time.

Happy counting! ;)


Note to Parents and Caretakers
This sharing is purely from our own research and available resources at hands, neither of us are child education experts. So please read this as a sharing and you shall choose to adopt whichever methods that best suit your little ones. Besides, please remember that every child's development is different, so do not compare your little ones with others, everyone is unique in their own way and as parents, we love our kiddos for being who they are, not what they are capable of.


Copyrights © Pui Hua and Fun With Little Ones, 2012 - present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of any materials/photos  within this website without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Pui Hua and Fun With Little Ones with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.