In my previous post, “Money Matters – Teach Your Kid About Money“, I spoke of the importance of helping develop your child’s financial literacy.
Financial literacy means having the skills and knowledge that allows an individual to make smart and useful decisions when it comes to money. These are not skills we are born with – these are skills that must be learned.
You can begin teaching your child money-related concepts early on in life by exposing them to concepts such as coin identification and sorting. From there you can teach them about the value of currency and even pay them to complete simple chores.
While these are great ways to incorporate financial literacy into everyday life, sometimes children absorb more information when the lesson is fun and interactive.
Here are 5 online games your child can play, ranging from Pre-Kindergarten aged to Middle School, to help them learn the value of money, earning, spending and saving.
Financial literacy is more than just knowing what a coin is worth. It means knowing what to do with money in strategic and effective ways.
#1: Lemonade Tycoon
Hailing back to the days of the Commodore 64, Lemonade Tycoon has long been a simple (and addictive) game that teaches children how to build a business from the ground up. Through running a virtual lemonade stand, kids must learn how to balance investing in supplies and turning a profit.
Recommended Age Group: Middle School
#2: Identifying Coins: Couch Fishing
From Education.com comes this simple and effective game used to teach small children the value of coins. Featuring a cast of cute and adorable critters, children must fish coins out of a couch with the help of a fishing rod.
The game helps to teach children how to identify quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies. This game is American and features realistic-looking U.S. coins.
Recommended Age Group: Pre-Kindergarten
#3: Peter Pig’s Money Counter
Never fear, Canadians! This collection of games is geared on teaching kids the value of Canadian coins and currency. Not only does the game teach identification, but it also branches into counting, saving, sorting and budgeting money.
The game also features a virtual store where kids can “spend” their earnings, providing a great lesson on making money as well as spending and saving it.
Recommended Age Group: Pre-Kindergarten and Elementary
#4: Rich Kid Smart Kid
From the money-gurus behind the popular series “Rich Dad, Poor Dad,” comes this series of four financial games that focus on finance, business and investing.
These games are obviously geared toward an older crowd, but they are fun and entertaining and teach some great lessons about using money wisely.
Recommended Age Group: Middle School
#5: Fun Shopping Game for Kids
Just as the name implies, this is a fun shopping game for kids. It takes the learning the value of money and applies it to a real life activity – shopping.
This games takes coin values and pairs it with simple math to emulate a shopping experience. The money skills learned here are coin identification, basic math and spending.
However, players are required to read off a shopping list and buy the required items while spending as little as possible. There’s some budgeting skills necessary as well.
Recommended Age Group: Elementary to Middle School
