Thank you for sharing your story. My dad taught me a lot of things about money and I love passing them on to my kids. They gobble up these tidbits and I hope that a few of them will stick!

I’ve been searching for financial courses for my children as well. To be honest I haven’t found many good ones. I’ve even considered creating my own version to help kids learn. If I stumble across any in the future I’ll be sure to send you a note.

That’s a sweet story about your dad. My children were never interested in workbooks about money either. They would look at a problem or two and then skip ahead to something more interesting, but put a few coins in their hands and they can solve all sorts of complex mathematical problems with them. I can understand that. Especially if they get to keep some of it after they are finished counting it!

I might just adopt this idea with my own children. I never thought about dividing up the coins by type. My dad was always stingy with his coins. He’s a generous man in many ways, but he was not going to hand over any of that change 😉 I love the idea of sharing the bounty with my kids. Let them count it, roll it and then keep it! Thanks for the comment.

It probably helped with math, money and a lot more than I didn’t even think about at the time!

Our daughter’s in first grade and I bought her some workbooks for counting money, which I recently donated after realizing she’s like me – she wants to count cold, hard cash instead of seeing pictures of coins in a book.

I love making up children’s games with my kids too. If we don’t explain how things work then our kids will create their own stories about how the world works. When it comes to money I try really hard to talk to them about the reality of personal finance. It’s easy to see how they would get confused when everything happens as bits on a computer somewhere and very little money actually changes hands. Thanks for sharing your story. We haven’t talked too much about checks, so I might have to write a check the next time we play the grocery game!

My youngest loved to stick things into his mouth when he was very young, all of the balls in the ball popper were smashed as he shoved them between his lips, but after awhile he outgrew it. Oddly enough I don’t remember my oldest sticking anything in his mouth as a little one. So I guess I lucked out in that department. Clearly you can’t let them count money if they are going to try to eat it 🙂

I can’t believe your teacher ratted you out for that. I feel like a good teacher would have helped you get access to more books. I’m still trying to get those $1 books into the hands of kids who want to read them!

Post dating checks is an awful feeling. I remember my next door neighbor’s mom doing that and always shaking her head while she looked at the calendar to figure out what to write. I’m sorry you had to experience that as a nine year old.