Play Shop: Money Management Activities for Toddlers and Preschoolers
The idea of trying to teach toddlers about ‘money management’ may sound strange.
However, it’s part of helping to become familiar with the world they’re living in.
Why do toddlers need to understand money management?
Here, we should be clear that we’re not discussing children of 18 months who might be able to toddle a few steps around a playpen. This discussion covers children of perhaps 3-5 years who are preparing for school and who are moderately mobile with a rapidly developing imagination.
Even then, the ‘money’ component initially is largely conceptual and related to the child’s development of skills relating to giving and taking, exchanging, cooperating, plus developing an understanding of consequences and value. It’s only in the period immediately running up to school that you can start helping them to construct games and exercises that will help with some of their basic arithmetic skills.
There is evidence that children who have played such money games are better positioned to cope with early school work.
Keep it simple
Most children in the age range of 3-5 are not yet equipped to handle abstract concepts or complicated arithmetic. So, the activities and games associated with running a play shop should be simple and above everything else, fun!
Try:
- moving some chairs around and constructing a (very safe) shop front for them to work behind;
- give them some things to sell;
- encourage them to make some things to sell. Old cardboard boxes are great and they can paint them and pretend they’re whatever they wish;
- provide some paper bags or paper for wrapping their sales in;
- have something that can be used as money. Toy money is fine but be sure your child is past the age where they will be tempted to put things in their mouth – or ensure your money is too large for them to do so;
- work out some buying scenarios in your mind. Play the ‘silly customer’ or the ‘silly shopkeeper’ to their customer. Little amuses kids more than to see their parent(s) being silly at times;
- be prepared to join in – and for some time. If they have friends or similarly aged siblings fine. If they haven’t, remember that little is more boring than being a shopkeeper with no customers!
Some basic concepts to explore
Just the play-acting alone will be great fun for your child or children but it’s a good idea to also plan in some basic familiarisation components. How you do this will depend a lot upon the individual child and their age but try:
- “how much is that apple?”. Then giving the appropriate play money;
- try buying several things and asking them to tell you the total. Use only smaller integers, avoiding decimal points. This is of the order of “how much will three apples cost me if they’re $1 each?”;
- explore change. The idea is of the order “if I give you $5 for $3 worth of apples, how many dollars will you need to give me back?”. Illustrate this with the play money coins;
- try to buy things when you don’t have enough play money to do so, then put one of them back until you do have enough in your purse.
Remember to generally let your kids lead the play and try to avoid taking over and becoming a coach for their game. Work your sums in subtly and don’t let your children think that the money and sums are the reason you’re playing with them.
A word on some expert opinions
It has to be mentioned that some child development experts have suggested that while teaching some basic arithmetic in preschool is fine, introducing commercial concepts may be more questionable. The reasoning is that it might encourage mercenary approaches in children rather than cooperative orientations.
The evidence for this one way or another is scant.
Ultimately each parent or care provider will need to decide how far to go in these games and how appropriate they might be for their child.
