I did the Toy Shop game with my children, a boy age 6 and a girl age 3. They loved it. Every Saturday morning she especially wants to “play store”, which is how I call it.

I have each bring 5 things from their room and lay it out on a couch, each having their own store (couch).

The first time I was the store owner and they purchased things from me. We would talk about why they were buying something (i.e. a gift for someone) and discussed why one thing cost much more than another (even if it was smaller, etc.). At the end of each making a complete transaction (down to bagging their things and the cashier putting away their money), we compared how much they spent and how much they have saved for later. You should have seen their faces. Having more money left over meant much more to them than having more (or bigger) stuff in their hands. Loved that!

Now they play store owner and I just watch/interact.

I have each bring 5 things from their room and lay it out on a couch, each having their own store (couch).

The first time I was the store owner and they purchased things from me. We would talk about why they were buying something (i.e. a gift for someone) and discussed why one thing cost much more than another (even if it was smaller, etc.). At the end of each making a complete transaction (down to bagging their things and the cashier putting away their money), we compared how much they spent and how much they have saved for later. You should have seen their faces. Having more money left over meant much more to them than having more (or bigger) stuff in their hands. Loved that!

Now they play store owner and I just watch/interact.

If she were to do them each once a day she would earn $5.00 a week. (she goes to her dad’s house on the weekends)

In reality she earns about $10 a month because it is a rare day that she actually does all her chores.

We already do quite a bit of counting (we homeschool) but I do like the ideas of counting with the coins and setting up a toy shop. (I’m hoping to set up a toy dumpster sometime, too

I wish my parents had taught me more about money when I was a child. I had a natural interest, so I am doing well financially, but some of my siblings aren’t doing as well.

One thing my parents did that really left a good impression on me was when they were close to having their mortgage paid off. About a year before, my mom put the balance of the mortgage on a piece of construction paper (I’m pretty sure it was green, that’s how much of an impression it left!). She hung it on a cupboard in the kitchen and every month, she’d subtract how much they paid that month. It obviously made her very excited to watch the balance go down and it left a great impression on me about the desire to be debt-free.