Sample Article
This article is for a non-existant company. It is simply a sample of what might be provided for a customer. Mentions of toys would include links to the actual toy.
Lucy’s Learning Kingdom Play Money
The Play Money set from Lucy’s Learning Kingdom is an excellent way to teach your children that real life costs money. There are many ways you can use the money, in conjunction with some of our other learning toys, to help your child succeed in math class at school, and in the real world as well.
Do your children think your money comes out of a hole in the wall whenever you insert plastic into it? Talk to them about how you get your money. It’s likely the total amount will see to be a great deal of money to them, so it’s time to help them learn where it all goes.
Put together a simulated adult life kit to help them learn. Give your children a paycheck that can be exchanged for the Play Money Fun Kit at Lucy’s Learning Kingdom. This comes with a wallet, so tell your children they need to purchase the wallet with their paychecks. Now hand them bills you’ve created. Be sure to include all the bills you regularly pay, with prices scaled to the amount of play money you have.
Now they need to eat. Using the play food from Lucy’s Kitchen, have them create menus and purchase food. You may want to follow this up with a trip to the grocery store to see what real food costs. They can make up menus and try to purchase what they planned with the amount of money you really spend. They will quickly find out why they don’t get steak every night.
Make sure the amount of money left over is similar to what you have left over, in terms of percentages. If you put money into savings, have them do that also. Then show them what happens to your left over money.
Another way to use the play money is to help children make budgets for their own use. Use the play money to decide how they should spend and save their allowances. Play money allows them to visualize how much money is needed for the bicycle they want. They can set out the amount they want to save each week. Circle it with yarn. Then set out the amount they will save the next week. Continue until they have the cost of the bicycle. This will help them make realistic choices about their money. Perhaps they’ll decide they want the bike faster and will choose something less expensive.
Play money could be used as family currency. Children can earn the money, perhaps marked with a heart so it doesn’t get mingled with the money your child plays with, and traded for special non-material paychecks, such as an afternoon at the park or the right to choose dessert. This can be a fun way to handle allowances or earnings when you don’t want your children to have too many toys.
There are many ways to use a simple, inexpensive package of Play Money from Lucy’s Learning Kingdom. You’ll probably need several sets to carry them all out!
See a sample article on solving a basic parenting problem--non-product specific.