Anyone else get those monthly book deliveries from Dolly Parton? I know it’ s an exciting day when that free book shows up for our youngest little book lover, Andersen. She has this routine where she opens to the inside cover where there’s a photo of Dolly, gives her a big kiss and says “Thank you!” It’s seriously the cutest ever! We’ve talked about taking her to Pigeon Forge to go to Dollywood just to see her reaction!
I was sitting at my middle’s volleyball practice one night when my husband sent me a picture of Andersen happily holding her new, shiny book.
He then went on and on about how great it is. Have I mentioned he’s an accountant? This is where he went wrong: He told me he checked Amazon and there’s a whole series. Now, he knows about my book problem. He also knows about my Amazon problem. What’s a girl to do? Within 5 minutes we owned the entire series and Amazon was happily shipping it to my door.
The first book is called Spend It, by Cinders McLeod and it’s seriously my family’s favorite so far!
It’s about this little bunny named Sonny. He gets his allowance and is excited to go to the store and buy everything. He’s under the impression that he can buy any 3 things that he wants because he’s earned 3 carrots (dollars) to spend. His mom helps him to realize that not everything costs the same and he’ll have to choose. The author also added some extra tips in the cover like “Starting Up”, “Reading the Story” and “After the Story”.
Each of the other books are about different, still incredibly adorable, bunnies. Readers learn lessons about how to earn, save, spend and give money. The author does a great job teaching these very adult lessons in a way children can understand and relate to through the eyes of the young characters. She uses charts to show what it looks like to earn each week and then save some, give some and spend some. My personal favorite character is the mom. She doesn’t “teach” but instead asks the young bunny leading questions. This is a great opportunity to stop and ask your child, or your class, the same questions.
This book just happened to show up right as I was starting my economics unit. I HAD to find a way to work this series! I wanted it to be a simple accompaniment to the books. Here’s what I came up with:
Each day we would read one book and them complete that section together. I chose to teach them in this order: earn, spend, save, give. Every day the class asked if we were reading the next book. They were bummed when we read the last one! I added them to the read aloud shelf so they can read them again if they’re missing their new bunny friends.
This activity was so simple to to make, but really brought all of the learning together in one space. Each of my littles walked out at the end of the week with a concrete understanding of the 4 things you can do with money. Plus, they had a super cute and fun poster to share with their family.
Here’s how we put them together:
1. You’ll need all three pages, a sheet of large construction paper (I prefer $ green), scissors and glue.
2. Glue both the two pieces of paper on the large construction paper. You will see a circle outline in the middle.
3. Cut out the circle from the final piece of paper. Glue it in the middle of the two papers over the circle outline. And you’re good to get started!
You can find this project on Teachers Pay Teachers here: Teach Kids About Money
Most of the books can be found as a read aloud on Youtube or you can buy them from Amazon like I did here:
