Learning about money

Jake has always had an interest in money. For as long as I can remember, he's always been fascinated. Initially, when he was quite young it was all the colours and how come they were different, followed by the different numbers on each bill. What did all of this mean?

Then came questions and comments about how each bill had a different scene.

From there he moved onto, "Who are those men on each bill?"

His interest in who 'those men' were, led to lots of discussions and learning opportunities. He sat wide-eyed and very attentive as he listened to us answer his many questions. First of all we discussed who each man was -- their names, their position, which political party they represented, when they were in power etc.

A few days later I stumbled across a poster showing each Prime Minister of Canada since Confederation. There was a picture of each one, along with their complete name, the year(s) in power and either a red or blue maple leaf underneath each one. He was ecstatic with this find and could hardly believe his eyes. "Oh thank you, soooo much!!", he yelled excitedly as he disappeared off to his room with it. After studying it for awhile, he emerged to find out why some of them had a blue maple leaf underneath their name, while others had a red one. That led to a lot more discussion about the various political parties in Canada and a bit of what each one stands for. At this point, he was the ripe old age of seven.

But most of all, he was excited to learn which Prime Minister was on each bill. Quite often he will refer to a bill by who is on it, "I got an old Laurier here, would you like to see it?" (Instead of, "Would you like to see my old five dollar bill?") He is quite shocked when he comes across a person who does not know who is on each bill. "Can you believe it, they don't know who's on the five?"

He continues on in this vein. Today I came into the living room to find him reading the latest issue of Money Sense magazine. Initially, the picture of a house sitting on a stack of bills had caught his attention. Upon further investigation, he found a picture of a house literally made of money --- he could hardly contain himself with that one. He sat for quite awhile, flipping through the pages and stopping to read here and there. When he'd made his way through to the back of the magazine, he set it on the coffee table with a simple....."Hmmmmm....very interesting."

Interesting, indeed. Not your everyday, run-of-the-mill reading material for most 10year old boys.