Family Money

For various reasons, we don't do allowance in our family, and I didn't want to start now, but it seemed like it might be nice to have a monetary system of some kind in place during this unit so we could use it to teach various economic principles. I know some people use this sort of system all the time, but to me it has always seemed like way too much work to be worth it—however, if it was only going to last for a month or so, it seemed doable.

All the time we were talking about currency, the children were designing assorted monies of their own. They LOVED doing this. They used symbols that were meaningful to the family in various ways, and they even used their currencies among themselves in exchange for goods and services.

For the family money, though, we wanted something more official, so Sam and the children worked together until we had a currency we all liked.

As you can see, it has many important symbols in it, most important being the bunny, which is joined by a donut and a tiny BB-8. We also used a phrase from the Family Proclamation ("the family is ordained of God") and the very apt Latin phrase "E duo, pluribus" ("Out of two, many.") :)

I made a list of wages and rewards, and I wasn't really sure how to price everything. I wanted the bigger rewards to be kind of hard to get, but not out of reach. And I wanted the things for which the children got paid to be kind of, I don't know, out-of-the-ordinary? And not only chore-like in nature? So, I mean, I didn't want to reward the children for doing the normal everyday things I expect them to do ANYWAY. And I wanted them to be doing things, kindnesses, for each other so it wasn't all about who could amass the most wealth. :) I really liked the things I finally came up with, and I loved watching the children doing those things. They read to each other and said sorry and gave compliments. Sure, they were doing it to get gain. But I liked it anyway! :) It was almost enough to make me want to institute Family Money permanently. But not quite. :) Especially since I think any reward system relies heavily on novelty and freshness for its effectiveness. But I DID tell them that we may do it again…someday.

The tasks in red were for things the children could do during General Conference weekend. I don't know why someone felt the need to cross them out in red afterwards. :)

I derived great enjoyment from referring to Sam and myself as "The Fed," by the way.

I was surprised that the "lunch date" reward was so popular. All three of the boys worked like crazy and saved enough to do it multiple times! I hadn't anticipated that, but I was happy to do it with them. I love having one-on-one time with the children, and logistically it's so much easier now that the older ones can help with babysitting!

No one ever chose to have "1 dinner off of kitchen cleanup." I wonder why? I thought that one would be going like hotcakes. The other stuff was just more attractive, I guess!