We are lucky enough to have a play bank center at our local Children’s Museum. It is a great place for cooperative role playing for groups of children. I love the oversize coins on the wall. Tornado Boy loves to play here. He loves being either a banker or a customer.
Tornado Boy waiting for his first customer.
Tornado Boy presents his savings passbook.
TB doles out money from the vault.
Trading bills with another banker.
It’s pretty easy to setup a play bank at home. We have a great play cash register from Learning Resources. It comes with bills, coins and a credit card that are great to use for playing bank and other money games. We are using the bills and coins to explore adding money and the concept of whether TB can “afford” to purchase something that he wants. It’s a good idea to alternate who gets to be the banker and who gets to be the customer so that the child can see the game from both perspectives.
Additional Resources:
- The Coin Counting Book is a good visual resource for adding coins.
- For more advanced money lessons, the U.S Mint has a nice selection of lesson plans that you can use to help teach your children more about money, too.
- The Mint.org has information on how banks work and more advanced topics like compounding interest.
- Neat Interactive look at the new $100 bill coming out early next year.
Check out what other kids are playing at Childhood 101 and to see what other kids are working on for math, check out Math Links at Joyful Learner.
Impressive play area! I love the vault! I have large posters of coins from my teaching days. I should invite everyone over for a bank day!
We just got some play money this past weekend. My kids loved playing at the bank at one of the kid museums we visited.
Ticia´s last [type] ..Valiant Knight
That set up at the Children’s Museum looks great! We used to have some toy money, but little fingers pushed it all too far into the cash register and we can’t get it out. I am thinking of getting some more though as part of a reward system I saw somebody post about. Teaching the value of work, money and purchasing in the future – I hope!
What a fantastic environment and fun, learning play for your kids. Love it!
What a fabulous museum and great way to make learning maths at home fun
Marita´s last [type] ..New Playroom
It looks like a great museum to visit. Our children museum has a play post office, but Anna was not interested in it at all. We tried a coin counting book and she declared it very boring
sunnyvale422´s last [type] ..Computer Math Or Genie Who Was Let Out of the Bottle