Three pounds and thirty nine pence

by Leyla [Thisdayilove] - 22:53

One, two, three pounds. Twenty, five, thirty, one, two, three, five, six, eight, nine. Three pounds and thirty nine pence.

At the start of this year I decided it was time to give both girls pocket money. Reward charts, stickers and various other positive methods had not worked and I wanted to not only reward the girls for good behaviour but also to help them understand the value of money. I loose track of the number of requests from the girls for various things. From mashems, blind bags, toys and sweets to everything else a shop can supply. With pocket money they can choose to save or spend their money on items they wish, and hopefully they will start to understand the value of money.

The girls get money for various things 5p for making their bed, 10p for being kind to each other, 2p for remembering to turn off their bedroom lights before school and for various other things. It might not sound a lot money wise but there are lots of things they can do to earn money and each one is about them taking responsibility for themselves and their actions.

Every night my eldest counts her money and then re counts it again, just to make sure. On Friday she asked if we could go shopping over the weekend because she wanted to buy new clothes. I tried to explain to her she needed to save up a little more for all the new clothes she wanted but she was determined, so we went shopping.

Clothes shopping was soon forgotten about when they saw the toy shop

I think they picked up every item in the shop and asked how much it was. My eldest performing calculations to work out if she had enough or how much more she needed. Trying to work out how many more days to make her bed before she could have a singing bird, or a troll.

The toy shop was proving to be unsuccessful so we headed next door to the sweet shop

Here the girls were very good and actually showed restraint! I was very pleasantly surprised. After showing them the weight of each item compared to the cost they soon realised that paying £1.75 for a plastic toilet filled with sweets was actually a lot of money when they could pay 75p for a bag of sherbet and get more than five times to amount of sweets, and have a pound left. Which is what they chose to do.

My eldest in the end spent her money on a wooden bird house, some sweets and a knitting kit to make a dog. For a six year old I think this is such a beautiful collection of items to spend your pocket money on and I am incredibly proud of her. We finished our day with hot chocolates and baby-chino.

Now taking a photo of all 3 of my favourite people seemed a good idea at the time, but I could only ever get one to smile, 1 would always be looking away and the other would be sulking, this is the best I got.

No really

I think Little Man felt a little left out as shortly after this photo he helped himself to his sisters!

When we came home my eldest discovered a five pound note in another of her play purses, she has decided we need to go again next Saturday to spend it!

This day I love three pounds and thirty nine pence