Have Fun with Money!
We know that teaching toddlers anything must be fun and interesting besides being educational, right?
Well, this is especially true for something as mundane as money management skills. No, seriously. Teaching preschoolers about recognizing money and using it can be fun.
The first step to teaching this important life skill is to introduce money to your child at an early age.
If your child is familiar with the touch and feel of money then he/she would be inherently curious to learn more about it.
Money recognition and identification lessons are key for your child to get started on money. Learning how to count, identify coins and paper money are important basic money skills to learn at an early age.
Here are 5 fun ways to introduce money to your toddler and make learning lots of fun.
1. Sort Coins with your Toddler by Value
Begin by differentiating coins by their value.
Our daughter who is three and a half loves sorting out coins of different denominations. She has started recognizing the numbers 1, 2,5,10 on the coins that we have in India.
You can similarly, help your preschooler recognize pennies, nickel, dime or quarter by size or color.
This also serves as a great activity to reinforce numbers, shapes and sometimes color which most toddlers are familiar with.
2. Spot Learning Opportunities
Keep your eye out for moments perfect for teaching money.
Whether you are using a toll booth, buying milk or your daily grocery, use every small opportunity to explain to your preschooler what you are doing and why.
These opportunities are great ways to familiarize your child with how money functions in the real world.
3. Use a Piggy Bank
This is our daughter’s favorite money “management” tool.
She loves taking out all the coins from her piggy bank and then counting to see how many are actually there.
Get a piggy bank that your childwill enjoy and relate to. It could be in the shape of a car, a cartoon character or a favorite animal.
Anything that would excite your child and make him/her go back to it every now and then will work.
4. Introduce Paper Money
Once your children have mastered coins or have started to get a little bored of them, it is time to introduce paper money.
One of the best ways to introduce paper money is to involve your toddler in your day-to-day financial transactions.
My daughter loves to go to the ATM and finds the whole process of using the ATM card to withdraw cash fascinating.
She has started to understand that paper money also comes in various denominations and is used to transact for products and services.
5. Use Money Related Toys
A toy cash register is a great gift for a three or a four year old to practice learning about money while having lots of fun.You can also buy or make a toy wallet for your preschooler and let him/her pay for items that they can buy from the refrigerator or a toy “shop” in their play room.
How do you make learning about money fun for your toddler or preschooler?
Do check out the other posts in the Kids and Money Series, dealing with teaching kids to save money, allowance management encouraging charity.
Photo Credit: Images Money
I love your cash register idea. I remember how much I loved playing with one when I was a kid. A great way to teach kids about money is by using fun, interactive shows and websites. We taught our (slightly older) kids about money by getting them student credit cards. I wrote about our family finance lessons at
Chrissie recently posted..5 Favorite Family Games From Rock Band 2 Songs to Minecraft
Hi Chrissie,
Thank you for sharing your experience.
I completely agree that using fun ways to teach children money like interactive shows and websites makes it much easier for them to learn.
Look forward to reading your family finance lessons.
Have a great weekend ahead