Learning about money can be a daunting task for children, but it doesn’t have to be! With the right approach and activities, teaching kids about money can be an enjoyable experience that will help them develop important financial skills.
There are many creative ways to make learning about money fun for children. From interactive games to role-playing scenarios, there are plenty of activities that can help kids understand the basics of budgeting, saving, and investing. By using engaging activities and real-life examples, you can make learning about money fun and interesting for your children.
Here are some fun ways to get creative when teaching children about money and getting them involved in everyday activities :
Everyday Activities
- Hopefully on the subject of money, the children are likely to have a money box, so a fun activity can be to empty the money box and sort out the coins into piles and count the money. This encourages children to get used to different currency values and recognise different coins.
- When at the supermarket, getting children involved with counting out different amounts of fresh produce like fruit and veg and asking them to calculate the total based on the cost of each item. Or another idea could be to get them to weigh the loose items of fruit and vegetable and then print a label with the total cost value of the item. These are a good way to teach children about budgeting & preferences by picking out good quality produce but is also a great way to reinforce basic math.
- When out shopping and paying for items at tills, especially the self scan tills, asking children to count out the money based on the the total displayed on the screen. This can also be especially fun, when physically putting the money into the coin slot.
Fun Ways To Teach Children How To Earn Pocket Money
- Have a chart with a chores list and different values attached to each chore. This gives them the responsibility of which chore they would like to complete in exchange for money. This is a good lesson to teach the skill of learning about higher and lower values and what is going to be a good use of time in exchange for potentially the highest financial value.
- Giving them the task of clearing out their old toys, clothes, belongings and helping to list it for them on a reselling website and once the item sells giving the total money from the sample to them to either save or spend on a new toy item that they have been wanting.
- Setting a list of achievements, these can be academic, helping them to reach a personal goal/accomplishment or randomly rewarding them for a random act of kindness and assigning different monetary value to each and making a verbal agreement with them that upon reaching the said goal/accomplishment they will be rewarded x amount of money.
Fun Online Money Related Games That Encourage Learning
Online games are also a great say to help teach children about money. Children love playing games online so this can be a very effective way to channel their learning in the right direction by encouraging them to play games that serve both an educational and fun purpose. There are a number of free games available online that can help make learning about money fun. One of my personal favourites is Treze Coins, the concept of the game is to count the correct number of coins as displayed and then once the correct value is reached you press the button on the Gumball Machine to collect a gumball. It’s a very fun and engaging game for children, which then sees them reap the reward for counting to the right value and paying the correct number of coins. A fun and educational way to learn about numbers and values.
When a child becomes engaged, they learn through a natural process.