As parents we want the best for our children. We have hopes and dreams for them—sometimes even before they are born. And one of the dreams that parents might have includes raising children who are good financial stewards. Our children should manage the resources provided to them by God wisely. As homeschooling parents we are in a unique position to raise our children to be good financial stewards. With so many teachable moments, let’s examine the many ways we can help our children.
Elementary Resources: From children’s books to online lessons
When your children are young, you can start teaching them about financial stewardship by introducing fun and educational books. One of the goals of BUCK Academy is to help parents educate children about personal finance. They have several resources such as BUCK Making Cents, Quick Cents to a BUCK, Baby BUCK: How Much Am I?, BUCK, First Bank Account. Introduce your preschoolers to money with their board book or help older elementary-aged children learn about opening a bank account.
If you are looking for more lessons, Reading Eggs’s mathematics program, Math Seeds, offers online math lessons that include currency. And I Know It is another online mathematics option to help your children learn about currency too.
Middle School Resources: Become an Entrepreneur
How do we teach children to become good financial stewards as they grow older? The lessons move beyond recognizing the coins and bills and learning to make changes to how one makes money and then uses it wisely. One approach can be to incorporate entrepreneurship lessons and activities into your homeschool day.
The Kingdom Code™ is a biblically based, hands-on curriculum that helps fourth through eighth graders learn about money management, how to budget, how to communicate with customers, and keep their business running. There is a step-by-step process to help your children develop their idea, forms to assist them in tracking details regarding their business, and a concrete curriculum to teach key ideas.
High School: Preparing for Life After College
In their final years of homeschooled high school, we push towards really making sure our kids are prepared for life after college. Of course, the biggest thing we might be preparing our children for is to be good with their personal finances. Homeschooling Parents want their children, no matter what they wish to do after graduation, to be able to handle money intelligently.
SchoolhouseTeachers.com offers several courses including Personal Finance in Bite-Size Chunks, Money 101, and Accounting 101 for those wishing to dig deeper. If you are looking for a text-based course, Personal Finance in Bite-Size Chunks helps parents and teens explore financial topics such as earning and spending, balancing a checkbook, and taxes. Money 101 offers a variety of seminars from David Kimball. The topics in Money 101 include the difference between a job and career, how one can start a business, budgeting, and more.
The Personal Finance Illustrated® Homeschool Edition from PEM Life offers high schoolers a great opportunity to explore not only the stock market and learn about it through an online simulator and curriculum but also budgeting. And the program allows parents to be hands-off or very involved in the day-to-day lessons and requirements.
Resources for Parents: Setting a Good Example
If you are seeking help for your own financial education, The Old Schoolhouse®, SchoolhouseTeachers.com, and The Canadian Schoolhouse offer help for you as parents. From worrying about finances as a one-income household to looking to control consumption, worries seep into our everyday lives. Some of the same resources shared for helping your high schooler are also helpful when refreshing our own financial education. And if you are looking at how you can take a Biblical approach to helping your children become good financial stewards, we have multiple resources starting with Biblical Financial Literacy: An Introduction. Where will you start with your children?
HomeschoolingFinds.com Author
This article has been written by Kristen Heider. She is the Business Building Team Manager of The Old Schoolhouse® and the Social Media Manager of HomeschoolingFinds.com. She shares more about her family’s homeschooling journey at A Mom’s Quest Teach.