Before I became a stay at home mom I taught just outside of Chicago for 8 years. I miss teaching dearly, but truly love being able to spend as much time as possible with my little dudes. With a teaching background I can’t help but incorporate my love for learning into our everyday life. One thing I often do is try to use everyday life skills. Money is one of those things! Believe it or not it is also a thing that many parents never introduce to their littles…and you it’s so easy! We all have piggy banks (or in our case, mason jars) and you know your little loves getting their hands on any money you’ve got. So let’s start young. Here are some super easy things you can do with money and coins to help your little learn some very important everyday life skills.

Simple Ways to Teach Money

Sort the money

This is perfect for your early learner. E (who’s 3) loves to sort coins. I like to start with nickels when sorting mixed money. as they often get confused with quarters. We call them ‘chubby nickels’ since the sides of them are the thickest coin! Then, feel free to move on to any of the others. Our nicknames are ‘thin dime’, ‘HUGE quarter’ & ‘copper peppy’ and no I’m not that creative, I picked those up from teaching along the way!

Make Patterns with the Money

You can make all kinds of patterns with money, and making patterns is a pretty awesome skill. Do penny, nickel, dime, penny, nickel, dime, ect… or quarter, quarter, dime, quarter, quarter, dime. You get the point.

Count Money

Count the money…not by the amount, just count how many coins you’ve got. Or put them into groups and count them that way.

Count Money by the Same Amount

For older littles, have them actually count by like coins. Count all the dimes by ten, nickels by five and quarters by 25…that’s a tricky one!

Count Mixed Money

Once they’ve really got it down add counting mixed money. Show them how to put all the same amount of money together and always count from the highest coin to the lowest.

Create the Exact Amount

give them an amount like 37 cents and have them make it for you. You can even have them make it for you in three different ways!

Give Change

If you want to go crazy, have them make change. This can be tricky, but it’s oh so much fun once they’ve really got the hang of money.

Money is such a great lifeskill to have. And trust me, your child’s teacher will thank you for this knowledge!

much love-

xoxo

TEACHING LIFE SKILLS TO YOUR LITTLES: MONEY