I found a good article about how to teach kids about money.

15 Ways to Teach Kids About Money

by Paul Richard

Introducing Kids to Money
Money gives people — both young and old — decision-making opportunities. Educating, motivating, and empowering children to become regular savers and investors will enable them to keep more of the money they earn and do more with the money they spend. Everyday spending decisions can have a far more negative impact on children’s financial futures than any investment decisions they may ever make. Here are 15 simple ways to help educate children about personal finance and managing money:

1. As soon as children can count, introduce them to money. Take an active role in providing them with information. Observation and repetition are two important ways children learn.
2. Communicate with children as they grow about your values concerning money — how to save it, how to make it grow, and most importantly, how to spend it wisely.
3. Help children learn the differences between needs, wants, and wishes. This will prepare them for making good spending decisions in the future.
4. Setting goals is fundamental to learning the value of money and saving. Young or old, people rarely reach goals they haven’t set. Nearly every toy or other item children ask their parents to buy them can become the object of a goal-setting session. Such goal-setting helps children learn to become responsible for themselves.
5. Introduce children to the value of saving versus spending. Explain and demonstrate the concept of earning interest income on savings. Consider paying interest on money children save at home; children can help calculate the interest and see how fast money accumulates through the power of compound interest. Later on, they also will realize that the quickest way to a good credit rating is a history of regular, successful savings. Some parents even offer to match what children save on their own.

You can read the other tips here.

Telling Stories to Children
By Jennie Amit Gandhi

Parents promise themselves to give the best to their children. The bar is high for parents to teach the kids values on tradition, discipline, language skills so as the kids grow up to be able citizens. The effort surely is rewarding when children imbibe the right things. Exploration is natural by committing mistakes. Parents should recognize and correct the wrong behaviour.

All children demand stories, be it eating time, a boring travel journey and surely it is a bed ritual. If you have paucity of time juggling with chores, then invest in some interesting fairy tale bed time story books. Children’s literature abounds with millions of elves, fairy, goblin, monster and sea devil stories. Interesting colour pictures, expressions and touch-feel books are available in the market. Rewarding the child through books is a valuable idea.

If you are reading a story, be enthusiastic. Use one hand free to articulate exclamations, pauses, commas and happiness. Use up and down animated versions and help the child participate. Children do not respond to routine and mundane reading. They are bored easily by repetitive ordeals and let story sessions be bonding times.

Both parents have to involve themselves either simultaneously or choose alternate days to suit schedules. The mind of the parent should be free and pending works should not interfere the narration. It is necessary, that one does the homework fool proof to answer surprising questions and explanations.

Introduce new words each time. Teach them words like good, nice, wonderful, best all mean positive happenings. Let them understand that bad, ugly, wrong is negative. Teach them opposites like day-night, up-down, sweet-bitter expressing them with your hands and face.

In case you are tired and it is natural that fatigue refrains you from being natural, then read a short story with nice colour patterns. Laze on a hammock with your child on a holiday and narrate true stories about your childhood. All of us live vicariously through our children during their growing years. So the best patterns are narrating a few lines about honesty, hard work and value about money.

If the child has a habit of seeing pictures from a very keen age, the child gets easily adapted to a pattern of self study. Their orientation is structured and they will focus on reading independently. Telling stories is an art and all parents naturally master it. Bed times are special and make sure not to introduce scary surprises and kids might visualize them in their dreams causing nightmares.

Actually the goblins, witches, wizards are to be introduced necessarily to deem it as non emulative values. Hence like all other theories on raising kids, tell them stories rich in tradition, worldly pursuits and also about the ‘Almighty’. Teach them the sacrifice of Christ and read them lucidly about Hindu mythology.

If you are really keen in imparting in rich values to your kid, check our sites on short stories, pumpkin carving and infant activities.

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Coloring for Kids
By Jennie Amit Gandhi

Sound and sight delight newborns. Their sense of smell is acute and hence they identify so well with their care giver. This is when stimulation is high to touch, seeing and hearing and this is our best chance to slowly expose the child to life’s pleasures. It is a very surprising fact, that children have sound logics. Many times they identify items by way of color, shape and size. The smile and the twinkle in the eye on seeing a colourful object is their way of recognizing things and a sure reason to mark a milestone.

When we buy a rattle for a child, they are intrigued by the color and sound of it. Flying objects like a silly cloth hanging on the clothesline attracts their attention and they are often found squealing at the curtain or moving colourful items. Once the motor skills are achieved, probably by the age of two, it is the best time to introduce them to the colourful world.

Invest in a good clay set for starters and let them play with the same. Make a snail and snake and they will love/imitate the same. Appreciate surely. Teach them the basic color like red, blue, green, yellow, white and black. Buy a thick crayon stick and let them hold the same for an entire day. Anything novel is a fancy item. Slowly introduce the paper and let them do what they want with it.

The next week is exciting for both of you. Give them a crayon and demonstrate how to hold the same. Take a paper and scribble, doodle or draw a huge circle. They sure are amazed at the wonder. Encourage them to mimic the activity. Many kids may not be particularly fond of your coloring themes and for starters they may shred the paper or want to break the crayon. Use safe colors and please supervise to avoid accidental swallowing.

One need not be a painter or blessed with a artistic bone to teach the child to color. Invest your time and be with the child. Toddlers have keen interest in colors. Water colors are best for holiday recreation. Get to a family ‘painting Sunday’ in the garden and have your breakfast along with coloring. Each person needs to color a picture. Ready pictures are available in animal prints, vehicles, body parts and cute daily life activities.

Make a garden, a mountain, river with boats, fishes and a wide mouthed crocodile. Draw a star, sing a rhyme on astronomy and let your child color all the pictures. Clap hard and praise well ignoring the mess. Draw an edge for them near the outline and tell them to color the hair in black, brown or golden. They will slowly become independent and present you a colored picture for approval.

Outline alphabets, balls, houses, blocks and get them to know about magenta, turquoise and ash blue. Mix colors for them. Teach them to count and recognize words but end the revisions with coloring.

The best time to make wise use of colors is during festivals. Halloween coloring pages
and pumpkin carving using pumpkin stencils is the best way to enter the world of colors. Children can also learn cake decorating ideas, painting ideas and other coloring ways by exploring their creativity and thoughts.

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