Pots of Gold

With St. Patrick’s Day just around the corner, it’s time to think about how you are going to celebrate the holiday with your kids. Will you serve a St. Patrick’s Day meal? Or decorate your dining room table in green with pots of gold? Will you be making fun St. Patrick’s Day cupcakes to bring to a school celebration? Or will you and your kids take some time to learn more about the history of St. Patrick’s Day?  Would your kids enjoy a thrift-store expedition to find an outrageously bright green clothing item to wear?

 No matter what your plans, you can use this spring holiday to expand your kids’ money savvy by building and managing a simple activity budget they can use to help you!

We have some suggestions for fun activities with your kids this St. Patrick’s Day. Why not kick things off with these riddles?

Q. What do you call a fake stone in Ireland?

A. A sham rock.

Q. What is a nuahcerpel?

A. Leprechaun spelled backwards.

Q. What is out on the lawn all summer and is Irish?

A. Paddy O' Furniture.

Q. Why do frogs like St. Patrick's Day?

A. Because they're always wearing green.

When to Do

On the weekend or after school

What to Do

Let your kids help plan and manage the activity budget you choose this year — and take part in the activities, too, of course! 

1.     Invite your kids to select this year’s St. Patrick’s Day activity. Here are some suggestions; feel free to spin off variations will be most engaging for your kids.

·      Special meal or traditional Irish food, like corned beef and cabbage, Irish soda bread.

·      Festive table decorations, like Pots of Gold (yellow Jell-O in lime-green “pots”), rainbow placemats, green napkins.

·      School treats, like rainbow or shamrock cupcakes.

·      Learning about St. Patrick and the holiday by reading. Some suggested titles: That’s What Leprechauns Do, Tim O'Toole and the Wee Folk, and St. Patrick's Day (Rookie Read-About Holidays).

2.     Work with your kids to compile a shopping list for the items you’ll need for the activity. Help your kids research costs by going online and finding ads in newspapers or catalogs.

·      You may already have some of the items, so just estimate the cost for them on the budget worksheet.

·      You may also have coupons for some of the items!

3.     Make a simple worksheet for the activity budget so your kids can help determine how much the activity will cost all together; for example:

                        What we need                        How much it costs

Item 1

Item 2

Item 3

                                                Total Cost:

4.     Once you have confirmed the budget, give your kids the activity budget money to be responsible for while shopping. If you have more than one kid, consider doing two activities or having them manage the activity budget together.

5.     If there is any money left after shopping, consider letting your kids keep it as a reward for a job well done, or see whether they would like to donate the extra money to a local charity.

What You Will Need

Paper and pencils

Catalog, Sunday inserts

Printout of recipe and ingredients if you decide to make a dish

Talk About It

Ask you kids if they thought it was easy or hard to plan for this activity. How did they like figuring out the budget? Did they get the budget right? If they had extra money left over, how did that feel? Did they like the riddles?

Map The Coins

Kids are naturally interested in money – because we are, of course! And money is a great vehicle for all kinds of exploration, both concrete and conceptual: Does a quarter stick to a refrigerator magnet? (No.) Is it worth the very high price to build hotels on Boardwalk and Park Place in our favorite Monopoly board game? (Yes.) Should I pass up the chocolate-flavored lip balm to save for a pet rock? (Maybe.) The choices, as we know, can go on forever. 

Coin collecting is a fun way to cultivate interest in history and geography as well as math and thrift. Since the states began issuing their own commemorative quarters, getting change at the supermarket or fast-food joint can be turned into a fascinating and suspenseful metallic scavenger hunt.

When To Do It

Over a one-month period, each time you go shopping

What To Do

To prepare, if you’re used to paying for purchases with a debit or credit card or check, plan to either stock up on cash at the ATM or get cash back at the supermarket so you can make more cash purchases when you’re out with the kids – and get change back.

1.     Go to usmint.gov for information about collector's maps and basic information about the state coin program.

2.     Get a map of the United States you can post on the refrigerator or other gathering place in your home for all to see.

3.     As you make cash purchases, let your kids go through all the change for state quarters.

4.     Have the kids keep track of their progress by coloring in the states as they find the quarters; they can keep their growing collection in a special container.

5.     Talk with your kids about the special features each state chose to appear on its quarter.

6.     Set aside all of the remaining change (duplicate state quarters, as well as dimes, nickels, and pennies) in a jar as a stash of cash for celebrating at the end of the month. Your kids may want to also spend the collected set of state quarters, or they may want to hang onto that hard-won collection.

7.     See what your kids do to try to get all of the state quarters within the month:

a.     Will they go to a bank to ask for help?

b.     Will they ask their friends to trade coins?

c.     Will they trade with their siblings, grandparents, and other relatives?

8.     When you get to the end of the month, use the jar of coins to treat your kids to something special. Have them count the coins to see how many of each kind they collected in the month. If they still need more quarters to complete the set, keep gathering change to hunt through.

Bonus Play: If your kids take a close look at their nickels, they will find some special designs among them, too. See if they can collect them all.

What You Will Need

Time to shop

Map of the United States that can be colored in

Pencils and crayons

Jars or containers for coins

Patience

Talk About It

When you reach the end of the month, ask your kids what they liked about collecting the quarters. Was it hard to find them all? What was their favorite technique for locating hard-to-find quarters? Did they learn anything new about the 50 states? Would they like to collect other coins?

Resolutions

It's that time of year again, when we take a look at our lives over the past year and realize we may need to hide the chocolate a bit more cleverly, cut up the credit cards, and call friends more often. Oh, and maybe get another hour of sleep each night.

But parents aren't the only ones who can find ways to do things differently or better in the new year. Why not get the kids involved, too? Goal setting is a great way for your young ones to learn about responsibility and establishing positive new habits.

Kids generally enjoy making New Year's resolutions. Making a promise to themselves and striving to keep it can be challenging and rewarding. And there may be some benefits for you, too, if your kids learn how to keep their promises.

When to do

New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day

What to do

The key is to make resolutions that are realistic, positive, and achievable. You can help your kids by explaining what it takes to make a successful resolution.

Consider these tips:

1. Be realistic. Kids will, as you might expect, earnestly tell you they can give up TV or eat everything on their plate at every meal for the entire year. (Yeah, right!)
1. With younger kids, help them choose a simple resolution that is part of daily life and within their reach in the near future (how about, say, brushing their teeth at least once a day?).
2. For kids to feel successful, they need to experience success, so it's best to pick resolutions with results that can be seen fairly soon. For example, you could suggest that instead of giving up TV altogether, they cut out one favorite TV program a week. Try replacing it with reading, playing outside, crafts, or another pleasurable activity.

2. Don't force resolutions. You can suggest some goals for your kids, but ultimately it’s important that you allow them to choose for themselves. This will encourage them to form their own ideas about how to handle many aspects of their lives. 

3. Write it down. Encourage your kids to write down their resolutions, embellish them if they’d like, and post them as declarations on the refrigerator or in other prominent places as a constant reminder of their goals. In fact, you can make a family 2010 resolution chart:
1. Remind your kids every evening before bed to mark off the areas in which they followed their New Year’s resolutions. 
2. Make sure your resolutions on are the chart too! Good role modeling can go a long way.

4. Take small steps. Your kids might propose giving up candy or packaged snacks, but stopping cold turkey will probably fail. Suggest instead that twice a week they go for a crunchy apple instead of after-school chips.

5. Encourage and support.  If your kids slip up and sneak in the TV show they were supposed to skip, tell them setbacks happen; don’t be discouraged, but try, try again.

Some ideas that work well for elementary age kids:

1. Picking stuff up. Kids have short attention spans and often have a difficult time picking up after themselves without being told. This is a good goal for your kids to work toward.

2. Helping others. If your kid’s not an only child, pitch the idea of helping siblings helping each other with everyday things.

3. Sharing. This is an area that is often tough for young kids. Remember to praise your kids when they do share and play nicely.

Talk about it

Because this is a year-long project, you can check in with your kids once a month — or oftener — to see what they think about this keeping resolutions business. Are they feeling good about what they are doing? What have they learned so far? Would they like to change anything?

Great Summary of Issues in Financial Literacy Education

One of the best articles written about the challenges we face in training people to be competent in money matters.

I have believed for a long time that financial literacy education's failure to date is not about the content, as there has been enough written, produced and printed about the in's and out's of the world of money. But instead, it is an issue of delivering the training information to the right person at the right time in a form that will be most effective for them. Not such an easy task.

The article, by Tom Hanza, the President of the Investor Education Fund, needs to be read by all people interested in and working on the education of kids, young adults and seniors in money matters.

A Brilliant Poem

Smart: By Shel Silverstein

My dad gave me one dollar bill

‘Cause I’m his smartest son,

And I swapped it for two shiny quarters

‘Cause two is more than one!

And then I took the quarters

And traded them to Lou

For three dimes — I guess he don’t know

That three is more than two!

Just then, along came old blind Bates

And just ’cause he can’t see

He gave me four nickels for my three dimes,

And four is more than three!

And I took the nickels to Hiram Coombs

Down at the seed-feed store,

And the fool gave me five pennies for them,

And five is more than four!

And then I went and showed my dad,

And he got red in the cheeks

And closed his eyes and shook his head–

Too proud of me to speak!

Charitable Giving: Helping Those In Haiti

In light of the recent ruinous earthquake in Haiti, we are all looking for ways to help. If you are considering making a donation here are a few things to keep in mind to help ensure your kindness gets to those who need it most.

1. Check the Better Business Bureau Web site for information about the charity's mission, compensation, expenses and rating. The site makes it pretty easy to check that the charity is ok.
2. Check out The Wise Giving Guide, published quarterly by the BBB Wise Giving Alliance, which summarizes the results of the Alliance’s latest national charity evaluations and features a cover story, usually with giving tips, on charity accountability issues or other topics of interest to donors.
3. Visit a charity rating site, like Guidestart.org, to help you find some of the top rated charities and direct links to make a donation.
4. It never hurts to see what others are saying about an organization in chat rooms, forums, and by checking postings or ratings about the charity you are considering donating to. A lot of negative comments could signal a red flag.
5. Consider mobile giving. MGive Foundation makes it really easy to donate $10 and have it charged to your phone bill. There are other organizations doing this now as well. You can search Google for other options.
6. Facebook has created a disaster relief page on which users can keep track of the latest information regarding the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake, as well as relief organizations that are helping the cause.

Even small donations contribute to the efforts to help the many homeless and injured in Haiti.

Live MOMTV: The Spin Cycle Interview: Wednesday (1/13) 9PM ET

Join me on momtv: The Spin Cycle, in conversation with Host Danielle Smith, as we discuss all sorts of things related to teaching kids about money. The why, the how, the when, answer questions and give practical advice.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

9PM ET/ 6PM PT

http://www.momtv.com/TheSpinCycle.html

Just go to the website and feel free to enter questions in the chat box. No need to log in or create any user id's.

Hope to see you there.

Denise