A few months ago I started paying the kids in REAL money every week (instead of Mommy Bucks) so they could pick out things from the store themselves. I also wanted to start teaching them about giving and saving.
Every Sunday, as long as they've done their chores that week, Aaron gets $2 in quarters and Claire gets $1 in dimes. They each put one coin in a "give" bank, one coin in a "save" bank, and the rest of their coins in their "spend" bank. Once they have a few coins in their give bank we put it in an offering envelope and take it to church.
The first time Aaron got up to $6 he was at Walmart and decided to spent his money on a little cherry-picker truck. They had a garbage truck for the same price, but he really liked the bucket arm so he decided to get the cherry picker first and save his money again for the garbage truck.
A couple of weeks later he had an itching to spend some money, so I let him go to Dollar Tree. He did such a great job picking out only 2 things (even though he had enough money to buy 3 or 4 things!). The cashier was so impressed when he counted out his money all by himself. He knows that 4 quarters is $1 and 1 quarter is 25 cents, so he was able to figure out $2.14 pretty easily! He couldn't understand at first why she gave him money back, but he took it!
This past Sunday he had finally gotten up to $6.50 in his spend bank so I took him to Walmart to get that garbage truck. Unfortuntely, it wasn't there! He was disappointed, but started looking for something else to buy. I felt bad for him, having to learn at such a young age that you can hardly buy anything in the toy department with just $6.50! Claire only had $1 that day so she was waiting to go to Dollar Tree, and Aaron decided he would wait for Dollar Tree too.
So off to Dollar Tree we went, and Aaron picked out 3 toys (an FBI playset, a yo-yo ball, and a foam airplane shooter thingy). Claire knew she could only get one thing, so she immediately picked a princess tiara and carried it around the store. She just knew that was what she wanted, until we got to the baby dolls. She really wanted a little pink baby, so she said she changed her mind and wanted to put the tiara back.
Then we had a really sweet moment. Aaron said, "Claire, I have enough money to buy that crown for you! I will check it out and buy it for you."
So very sweet--it melted my heart! Aaron got to the checkout with his 3 items plus Claire's crown, and he did a great job counting out $4.28. (I gave him 3 extra pennies!) The lady behind us in line thought he was the sweetest little thing and didn't seem to mind waiting for him to count it all out. Claire checked out her little pink baby doll, helping me count to 11 as we counted out her dimes.
These are the sweetest kids!!!
2 comments:
I like this idea of separating money to give, save, and spend! Hmmm ... I think $2/week x 3 would add up pretty fast ... maybe we can just give everybody the $1 in dimes! :)
That was the sweetest story ever! I seriously teared up. Aren't they sweet?!
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