Teaching Kids About Money

Today, I wanted to share some things we are doing to train our kids to be wise with money.

First, people are more inclined to save money when they have dreams and goals for how that money will be used. We are already helping our 11, 8 and 6-year-old sons think about their long-term goals (like cars and college) and their longer-term goals (like buying a house or having a wife who stays home with their children).

Just this week our 8-year-old resisted the temptation to spend all of his birthday money as he thought about his goal to save some money for his summer vacation and the rest to add to his car fund. He will have to double his lifespan before he is ready to even think about buying a car, but the money won’t be there if he waits until he is 15 to start saving it. We are already planting seeds in their minds that it is important to pursue a career that allows them to be involved and available to their families, and at the same time meet the responsibility of being the sole bread winner.

We also talk to our kids about money A LOT in our every day situations. We left a drive-thru line a couple of days ago when we saw the prices. I told the kids, “This place will cost $4 per person and we usually spend $2. I can’t justify spending twice as much as usual. Think how hard Dad works for this money! We can’t waste it!”

They hear statements like these all the time:

“Everyone needs to order water at the restaurant. It would add $10 to the bill if we all got soda!”

and

“God provided this for us. We need to be responsible with it.”

We explain to our children how credit cards work, with examples that help them understand the benefits of cash-back and the high costs of carrying a balance. We tell them why we buy our gas at this station rather than that one. When we decide to wait to purchase an item until it goes on sale, we verbalize that so that our children know we are exercising patience to save money. They understand that if we spend money on one thing, something else cannot be purchased. They are not under the illusion that money grows on trees.

They know that we usually eat at home, because it is cheaper. They know that when we do go out, we choose places where kids eat free at certain times or on certain nights of the week. They hear us say, “I’m going to order such and such because it sounds good AND fits within my budget.” Even mom and dad keep an eye on economy when we go out to eat.

We also talk to them about bigger purchases, like our house or our car. We help them to understand what those things cost and why we chose one over another from a financial point of view. When we have financial needs, we pray about them as a family. We talk to them about our tithe.

The children and I talk regularly about how grateful we are to their dad, for providing for us and enabling me to stay home with them. I ask them to think how hard life would be for their dad if I didn’t guard the money he brings home, and that it will be impossible to achieve their own goals for family life if they marry a frivolous woman.

Our kids are not always wise in the choices they make with their own money. But they are learning. And when they fail, and blow all their money on something they don’t need, that’s OK. We use that as a lesson, too. I would rather see them learn that lesson at age 5 than at age 50.

As we take the time to verbalize our thinking and explain our actions, our children gain a better sense of how to handle money. They also begin to formulate the values that will shape their own families one day.

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Eight Ways to Enhance Language Arts at Christmas

1. Make up a story to tell your children over a period of days or weeks during the month of December. Swiss Family Robinson began as a series of stories that Johann David Wyss told his children bit by bit, each night at bedtime. As a parent, you can capture your children’s hearts and imagination with the retelling of the Christmas story and stories of your childhood Christmas memories.

2. The Long, Long Christmas Book Train. Around the ceiling in your homeschool room, put a large construction paper red or green train car each time your children finish a book in December. Challenge your children to read enough books in December to make the caboose and engine meet or fill up a whole wall! When the Christmas train goal is met, throw a Christmas train-themed party with another homeschool family.

3. Name that Christmas “Stuffie.” Give each of your children a $1 small stuffed animal or “stuffie” for your December homeschool mascot. Spend an hour thinking of names for your Christmas “stuffie.” Each child makes up their own list of 20 or 50 creative “Yuletide-themed” names, depending on the child’s age. Then, have them eliminate names and come up with their most favorite.

4. “Read to me by Skype.” Have an older homeschool student, cousin, aunt, or grandpa skype or telephone each day during December and read your younger child a Christmas theme story. If you have older children, have them call up a younger homeschooler each weekday in December and read to them.

5. Don’t get out of your regular library habit. Your children could easily stay home during busy days and use the internet, but they also need to visit the library in person. Stay and read at tables. Do a Christmas craft, if offered. Gaze and gawk. Dawdle through the aisles.

6. Writing enhances reading. Reading also enhances writing. There are many opportunities for a child to write around the “Holy-Days.” The lost art of letter writing can be found again, when your kids write letters to each relative.

7. What you do; not just what you say. Even during the busy month of December, Mom and Dad need to read each day to set the “reading is important” example.

8. Cereal Book Club. During December invite some homeschool friends over to your home for a Cereal (Serial) Book Club. Each child brings a box of their favorite healthy cereal to share and a copy of an assigned book in a certain series with the topic of winter or Christmas. Each child shares the book’s name, two amazing facts about it, and reads their two favorite pages of the book aloud. Encourage all the children to finish the other books in the “cerealies” (series).

Who to Thank this Thanksgiving

While it’s a nice thought, very polite, and good manners to teach your kids to be thankful, it is not the whole truth.  It’s like wishing someone good wishes, when you could be praying for them.  It’s like saying a good word, when you could be saying a good word about Jesus.  It’s like hoping they get well, when you could be praying and trusting for the Great Physician to heal and comfort them.  It’s like standing in the middle of a field and saying thank you for the trees, instead of looking up to heaven and thanking the God and Creator of the universe for His creation.

This Thanksgiving, let’s not just teach our children to be thankful, let’s teach them Who to thank.

1. Crown of Thanks. Cut different shapes and colors of leaves out of colored paper.  Write on the leaves what you want to thank God for.  Tape on the wall, up around the ceiling.  Circle the room with a crown of thanks to the Lord.

2. Be Thankful Finger Play.

Lord, I have two hands, 10 fingers that I can wiggle
Lord, I’m thankful for jello, yellow jello that I can jiggle

(Hold up your hands, wiggle your little finger on your left hand first.
wiggle wiggle – First, I’m thankful for_________.
Keep your hands up high, wiggle your ring finger next on your left hand
wiggle wiggle – Second I’m thankful for ________.
(Keep going with all ten fingers, until you are all the way to your little finger on your right hand.)

Lord, I’m thankful for 10 things, but there’s so many more.
But most of all I’m thankful for Jesus. It’s Him that I adore

3.  Thank You Reflection. Keep Post-its in the shape of a turkey or leaf near the bathroom mirror with a pen. Family members and visitors can write down what they are thankful for this Thanksgiving week and post-it on the bathroom mirror.

4.  Thank you List. Make a list of what we are thankful list, instead of what we want.  Do you usually have an ongoing grocery list on your refrigerator where family members can write down a grocery item that is missing from the cupboards or refrigerator?  How about keeping a list of what you are thankful for this Thanksgiving?  Keep a running list of what you are thankful for, what you do have this Thanksgiving.

5.  Thankful Cake. On the dessert table this year at Thanksgiving consider including a Thankful Cake.  Write on the top of the Thankful Cake in the middle “We are thankful for…”   Then, write in icing different things that your family is thankful for on top of the Thankful Cake.

6.  Thank the Lord Around the World. Thank the Lord in different languages.  Write or record thank you in many different languages around the world.  Before the Thanksgiving family prayer at the table, play the recording as you thank God for loving the whole world and giving his only begotten Son for the world that whosoever believes in Him might not perish, but have eternal life. (John 3:16)

7. Hymn Sing. Why not start or continue a Thanksgiving tradition of singing together? Sing several hymns or praise songs together before or after your Thanksgiving meal.

8. Thank You Video. You can make a video throughout the morning of Thanksgiving Day, interviewing family members with the question, “What are you most thankful to the Lord for this Thanksgiving?”  Show the video before or after Thanksgiving Dinner.  Most point and shoot digital cameras come with a video camera function which can serve this purpose well.

Do some of these things so that your family might remember that we are not only thankful this Thanksgiving but that we know who to thank – To God be the Glory.

Tools of the Trade…Post-It Flag+ Highlighters

While I love the highlighter, I have to admit it’s the flag post-its that have stolen my heart. The small flags have worked wonderfully as bookmarks in my children’s school books this year. They are strong and stand up to re-application. Infact, I am still re-applying some of the flags that I began using last August! Highlighters are available in 15 colors and flags can be refilled easily. Post-It also now has flags available in writing pens too.

What can you not live without in your homeschool? Share your favorites by submitting to mentoringmoments@aolcom.

The Christian Homeschooler’s Library Podcast

Creating a Bird Garden

Molly Evert
Evert Birding Blog

I remember dreading the start of school one year.

The time had come in our homeschool to study Botany, a subject I felt sure we would all hate.  I’ve always known I have a brown thumb, and the experiments in our book left me in a cold sweat.

I’ve never been able to raise bean plants from seed and measure their growth.  Building a light box and forcing bulbs in the winter seemed tortuous to me. Nevertheless, I follow a classical cycle for science and the time had come.  We would garden–or die trying.  Or kill plants trying.

We read and learned and did the experiments as best we could.  Check, check, check.  Until one day, the children wanted to apply what they were learning.  They wanted to—gasp—plant a real garden!  And although I thought I hated gardening, I cannot resist projects which make learning come alive, especially when it is conceived in the hearts of my children.

This would not be just any garden.  An area developer had bulldozed the forested lot beside our home to make way for a new house.  The boys were devastated that the birds they loved watching were no longer coming to our yard.  They envisioned planting a large garden for the birds, full of flowering trees, brambled-berry bushes and sheltering shrubs.

We began researching, planting only those trees and shrubs which would provide food, shelter or both to the songbirds we hoped to lure.  Our official study of Botany was finished long before our Bird Garden was.  Little by little, over the course of the past year, four young boys and a now-willing mommy planted over 50 trees and shrubs.  The boys had lots of practice preparing root bound plants, mixing enriched soil and manure with our Georgia clay, and learning how to help the plants thrive.  I learned right along with them.

Our yard is full of birds again, and it has been a delight to welcome migrating species along with the residents. Even more beneficial has been the time spent working together to accomplish a common goal. We have all grown to (dare I say it?) LOVE gardening, and we’ll remember this project as one of our favorites.

To read more specifics about the Evert family bird garden along with pictures, visit Molly’s birding blog.

Diary of a Homeschool Mom…Math Makes Me Look Like an Idiot

Carla Anne Coroy
Married Single Moms

Complicated concepts sometimes make me look like a real idiot. I’m pretty good at hiding my ignorance in most instances. When my kids ask me hard questions I try to at least look intelligent until I have the chance to look up the real answer.

The other day I was blown out of the water and my lack of brain cells was prominently displayed before every family member.
My twelve year-old son asked me to help him with a math question. Here’s the question he was working:

I hope you can see why I told him to move on to the next question so I could give him my full attention (and call the 1-800 number in the book or call my husband to do a little substitute teaching) after I’d made lunch.

He moved on and encountered this question:

He asked me if anything to the power of zero is one. I couldn’t understand the question because it’s been a while since I talked ‘algebraic’. Thinking that learning Greek in a week would be easier I walked over to take a look at the actual question. This looked so much easier than the first one I decided to try my hand at it. Surely more than two decades away from taking math classes hadn’t wiped everything out of my mind, right?

So I leaned over the table, pencil in hand. Smart me says, “So, like with these two x’s here at the beginning… that’s kind of like two times x.”
“Yeah, mom. I kind of figured that out a long time ago. All I really want to know is anything to the power of zero one?”

Because I was now trapped I started talking. I said all kinds of very philosophical things and threw in a few math words here and there and finally came to a conclusion. “No,” I said emphatically. “That can’t possibly be true, because if you multiply something zero times it must be zero not one.

“Moooommm,” he groaned. “I’m pretty sure it’s one.”
In a few minutes I had convinced myself that I had figured out the theory, facts and operations behind all of math-dom. So when my husband waltzed in totally unaware of the density of the air in the room I fluffed my peacock feathers and said, “Well, let’s ask the expert, shall we?”

Trent casually walked over to the sink, still not cognizant of the fact that he was about to make history in our home. As he leaned over to rinse the milk out of his glass I hit him with both barrels.
“Okay, Trent. Our son seems to think he knows better than me. Here’s the question… if I have a number… say 136 and I add an exponent of zero to it, what does that equal?” (If you read that and heard a sneer in my voice you’d have the tone down perfectly!)

Calm as a cucumber my husband replied (still unaware of the tension in the room), “Anything to the power of zero is always one.”

My son’s hand hit the table in a prize-winning slap! He hadn’t ever grinned so big… ever! “Told you, Mom! I told you so! Man, I can’t believe I’m actually smarter than Mom!”

Thus has ended the beautiful innocence of my son’s blissful ignorance of what his mom is truly capable of – or not capable of as the case may be. It was a sad, sad day.

A lot like the day the kids figured out that there really were no eyes in the back of my head. It had taken them over an hour of an intense head massage (four little sets of hands running through my hair was the closest I’d get to a spa in those days) to finally guess that the only reason I wouldn’t tell them where I kept my extra set of eyes is because I liked the head rub!

So the bottom line is the truth is finally out. I’m not a math whiz. I have to use a calculator to figure out how to double a recipe… just don’t tell anyone!

I don’t have eyes in the back of my head. I don’t have supersonic ears that can hear what the kids told their friends at their house last night for dinner. (Although it’s great to have friends who are willing to call and tell you what was said at their supper table while you weren’t there!) And neither do I have a lie detector built in my body somewhere… unless the Holy Spirit counts… He sure does a better job!

We’ve laughed a lot about my math blunders. The thing is that my kids know that when I really don’t know the answer I know where to find it. I can call the 1-800 number and talk directly with the man who wrote the math book. He’ll tell me everything I need to know, not only how to figure it out myself but to teach my kids. (It is kind of handy, though, to have married a walking calculator, I must say.)
I’m so glad it works like that in life.