I've been spending some time recently planning our financial literacy course for next year. It's based on the book Raising Financially Fit Kids. I reviewed it on the blog here. There are probably a number of curricula offerings for financial literacy in the homeschooling world, but after glancing through the book again I was confident I could put something together that fit the Charlotte Mason philosophy (not that I'm an expert), fit our family's needs, and could be extended through not just this coming school year but every year.
We've never done anything regularly on financial literacy before. I decided to start with the first set of Basic Money Skills for 5-8 year olds. Joline Godfrey outlines activities and books for each skill as well as good books for parents or teachers to read so we can understand them ourselves. I simply went through the recommendations and chose a book and an activity or two for each skill. We're going to go through all ten skills reading a book for each one (generally one book per week), then go through all ten skills again with activities pertinent to our family and First Son. I love this plan because we'll be reading lots of books (hooray!) and because it allows us to cycle through the skills at least twice in the coming year. Rather than go through them a third time, we're going to read through a book on money - the history of money, how it's made, what it looks like in different countries, and so forth.
Our library had many of the recommended books and I had a couple myself, but there were a few I couldn't request. It turned out to be difficult to search for children's books on particular money skills. (Shocking, I know.) I found a list from the Ohio credit unions with suggestions that helped a lot in filling in the gaps. I'm still looking for a good book, a living book and preferably a picture book, on borrowing money or using a credit card. Let me know if you have any ideas!
We'll be spending 10-15 minutes a week on financial literacy. It's not a lot of time, but it will be dedicated and directed.
