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We just wrapped up our final year of pre-school last week, and throughout the course of the last 10 months, I have been blown away by how many educational topics my twins’ teachers covered. Not only did they learn how to identify and write the entire alphabet and their numbers, but they even did a lesson plan on coins and money! The children learned to identify the coins and their numerical values and began the basics of math.
When this month’s Kids Night In Box (KNI) arrived, I was excited to dive in, knowing that it would be focused on finance and money. I was unable to review the newest KNI box because they’re so popular that they sold out! That goes to show you just how fun these boxes are for kids!
I have to admit, this month’s box was a little lean on the contents (despite the fact that the actual box is a meant to be a pig- to be converted into a piggy bank), and I was feeling a bit short-changed (see what I did there?!), but as we combed through the monthly newsletter, it contained a little more beef-including recipes for cheddar sliders and vegetarian BLTs!
Since finance is such a complicated topic to teach to young little minds, I understand and appreciate the reason behind the box having fewer materials than usual. We started our night in by reading the included book, If You Made A Million, by David M. Schwartz. As I was reading it to the twins, I sensed them both zoning out after the numbers started climbing and the explanation on interest was introduced. Jake said he wanted to save his money for 50 years since it would earn a lot of interest. Lilah decided to pretend to be a banker and hoarded the money into a laundry basket. She taught us about money laundering. Just kidding.
Lilah’s lesson in anti-money laundering.
We used the included play money to follow along with the book so that the twins could see the different combinations of coins and bills that amount to the numbers in the story. I was impressed that they both knew the values of each coin and were able to do the simple math of adding the coins to create the total being discussed in the book. As soon as the numbers started climbing higher, they weren’t able to add the money combinations as easily, but it was still a fun introduction to finance!
After-pool activity of counting coins and learning the value of money.
Included in the newsletter is a foundation lesson. It has two options depending on the child’s age. For the little children, it encourages them to match the coin to the name and use the included play money to match the coins on the page. For the older children, they are encouraged to match the coin to the value and then total up coins that are paired. The newsletter also includes lyrics to money songs, and there is a link to the KNI website where you can listen to the songs and sing along.
One of the main activities of this month’s KNI box is to teach children the value of hard earned money. Using imaginative play, the children are to pretend to own an ice cream shop. They have to use the play money to purchase their materials from the adult(s) and then use said materials to make ice cream from scratch. Speaking of scratch-I was scratching my head trying to figure out how to make the ice cream because there were no included instructions. I’m told that original recipients of the box received an email with instructions. Because we were limited on time and didn’t have instructions, we made lemons out of lemonade with our situation. Yep, we went into our freezer and scooped out store-bought ice cream into cones and enjoyed some good old fashioned, slow-churned Edy’s! The return on investment was pretty high, considering it garnered lots of smiles from the twins and admittedly, I didn’t have a mess to clean up!
While finance is always a difficult subject to teach to little ones, it’s never too early to teach them the value of a dollar and a good work ethic. When asked what they would do if they earned a million dollars, Jake said he would climb Mount Everest and take a rocket ship to the moon. Lilah said she would like to use the money to visit the Rescue Bots (on Netflix). The twins used the included Saving Money sheet to write down their goals as well as the jobs they could perform to earn money to support their dreams.
If you’d like to try a future box, click this link to see the upcoming boxes!
Tamar Blazer is an attorney-turned-twin mom, with a passion for her family, friends, writing, good food, home decor and laughing. When she’s not lamenting on her lack of sleep, you can find her doing one of the too many projects she likes to take on, usually with a twin on either side.
