Understanding Importance and Value - A Newsletter for Parents of Third Grade Children

Learning More About Yourself

Before you can teach basic money concepts to your child, you need to look at your own values and attitudes related to money.

Values are those very basic things that are important to you. Attitudes are your reactions, positive and negative, to an idea.

Values are strongly influenced by what we experienced and learned as a child. But this can change over time and as we grow.

Choosing What is Important to You

Ask the adults in your home to rank these choices in order of importance to them. Then discuss your answers. The choices you make are a clue to some of your values. These are the values you will teach your children.

Deciding What You Value

Have your child fill in this chart about things he or she likes to do. Then talk about the answers and see if your child can identify the values associated with his or her choices. Values indicated by the choices are money, family, people, or self.

What Do You Value?

List five things you really love to do. Place a check in the column under the right sign for each of these activities.

• $ for things that cost money
• P for things you do with people
• F for things you do with your family
• A for things you do alone

	$	P	F	A
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Talking it Over

Family meetings or councils are a good way to talk over lots of issues, including money. Each family member has a chance to tell about his or her wants and needs. As a unit the family can decide how to allocate their money.

Children need to be included in discussions about money so they can understand where the money comes from and why it is used the way it is.

Prepared by Donna K. Donald, family life field specialist, and Vicki W. Sickels, former family support program associate, and edited by Laura Sternweis, communication specialist, Iowa State University Extension

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Issued in furtherance of Cooperative Extension work, Acts of May 8 and June 30, 1914, in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Stanley R. Johnson, director, Cooperative Extension Service, Iowa State University of Science and Technology, Ames, Iowa.

This newsletter is published for families with first grade children by Iowa State University Extension. For more information about parenting education, contact your local county extension office or access the Iowa State University Extension to Families website, www.extension.iastate.edu/families.