Learning about money!

Money is an important aspect of life and one that needs to be taught well so that children can learn the importance of saving and sensible money management. And it all starts when they are really young. Both my boys have been fascinated with money since a young age and we have encouraged this curiosity by giving them small amounts of pocket money and discussing where this money goes. They each have a piggy bank where they can put their money and save up for a toy they would like. We have a family donation jar where we put small change and encourage the boys to do the same. When they visit the turtle sanctuary near our home they take the money and donate it to the turtles to help them. Finally they have the option to put their money in the bank and this is what they do with any birthday and Christmas money. They are learning that this money is for their future and that by leaving it in the bank they receive bonus money called interest. 

So all that said, they also want to touch money! Play with it and post it into their piggy banks most days. This is great contact and we use these moments to teach counting, the names of the coins and simple math concepts such as ten 10 cent/pence coins make 1 real/pound (we are trying to teach them about the two currencies they will have the most contact with first).

Here are a few of the activities we have done recently which have been fun and received with interest.

Coin cleaning
This was such a simple activity and one they have wanted to repeat many times. We put one of each coin in a small pot and covered them with vinegar. Then we went off to school. When we came home the coins were super shiny. The boys got excited to see how shiny the coins had become.

Coin rubbings
We used our shiny clean coins to make a collection of coin rubbings. This is another simple activity which requires a piece of paper, some crayons and some coins. The only tricky part is trying to keep the coins still under the paper while they do the rubbing so we started with the bigger coins.

Drawing, counting and value representation
We took to the white board to draw around the coins then draw numbers and explore the values using our number rods. We discussed how two fifties make 1 real/pond and other summing of coin values. Although the boys are young they started to look closely at each coin to see what number was written on each one and they grasped the concept that certain coins go together to become 'the same' as other coins.

If you have some other ideas for us on how to learn more about coins, value and money, please share them with us and all Babysteps readers in the comments below :)