Finance Lesson for Toddlers

Giovanni is at a really fun age.  He is not hyper or super active in terms of climbing, running, or going wild.  But he is always busy.  (Unless Spongebob is on, then you might get a 20 minute reprieve.)

Anyway, one of his favorite past-times is "collecting" things.  He gets a bunch of "whatever" together, finds a container for it and then takes it out, puts it in, takes it out, puts it in, etc.

He has made collections of little action figures, cars, bathroom products, spoons, plates, sticks, DVD's, and books.  Tonight he spent a good while putting cars in a Noah's Ark toy, and then taking them out again.

One day, I found him playing with his daddy's "collection".  Kevin had taken out some money for us to pay some bills (one day I'll explain this process - it is really fun).  He put the money into an empty cuia until we could get to the bank to pay the bill. (A cuia is a wooden cup used to drink chimarrão - a hot tea that every person in our state drinks - except for us).

Here are some shots of Giovanni having a great time playing with the money.
(It looks like play money if you are used to only American dollars.)

I think it's important to start young in teaching our children the value of money, don't you??