Chasing the Fionist Dream

Remember COVID? Of course you do. Around this time four years ago, we were locked down at home with a stir-crazy and very creative three-year-old who really wanted to get out and go shopping. She informed us that she was heading to the store, pushed a laundry basket to our kitchen pantry, and started filling it with food items. We decided to play along and use the opportunity to teach our daughter about money.

The shopping game has since become a hit in our family, especially now that we have another three-year-old who loves numbers. We love it so much that we wanted to share it with you.

So how do you play?

1. Design the store. Open your pantry and let your kid choose your supermarket’s selection. The more varied, the better. Anything closed that isn’t breakable is up for grabs. Feel free to limit them to a certain number of items. Ask your child to arrange the merchandise within their own reach.
   
   
2. Set pricing. Affix paper price tags to the food items. Depending on your child’s development level, they could all be one, all be two, or be a different numbers. With our three-year-olds, we generally make most of the items 1 coin, some 2, and the more special things 3 or 4 coins.
   
   
3. Prepare to shop. Get out a laundry basket, box, shopping bag, or anything that can function as a shopping cart.
   
   
4. Allocate a budget. Give your child 10-15 coins or anything that can serve as money. We tend to use 10 agorot coins for this. For preschoolers, each coin is worth the same. Make sure that they don’t have enough money to buy everything in the “store”.
   
   
5. Go shopping! Instruct your child to fill their cart with whatever items they want to buy. Explain that they don’t have enough money for everything, so they need to choose carefully.
   
   
6. Checkout. When they are done selecting their grocery items, invite them to bring their cart to you in order to pay. Count out the items and their money together with them. If their shop costs more money than they have, explain to them that they don’t have enough money to pay for everything and help them figure out which items to return or replace in order to stay in budget. Once they can get their shop within their means, congratulate them for staying withing their budget! What a big kid and what a great shopper!

Our kids love this game because they get to explore insider our pantry, handle money, and shop like a grownup. We love this game because it introduces basic addition and subtraction and teaches kids how to budget and not feel the need to buy everything in the store. The best part is that you can adapt the game to grow with the child. Introduce different prices or different denominations of coins. As long as your kid is interested, the sky is the limit.

While our three-year-old loves this game and plays it often, our seven-year-old has graduated to the real-life shopping game. She sets a budget for herself (usually 5 or 10 shekels but sometimes more if there is something in particular she wants) and brings that amount of her own money to our neighborhood supermarket or newly-opened knickknack store. She checks the prices of anything she’s interested in and figures out what she can buy with the money she brought, knowing that she doesn’t have to spend all of her money or even buy anything at all. And since we don’t give her money on a regular basis, she’s always looking for ways to earn money, most recently growing seedlings and selling them to neighbors. We’re very proud of our little entrepreneur. ❤

How do you teach your kids about money?

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