Chore Charts, Money and Decimals

About a month ago the kids started asking about money and how much things cost, so we decided as a family to introduce the concept of an allowance and of chore charts. I know there does exist some controversy around the idea of chore charts and an allowance-that introducing a monetary reward for tasks around the house may contradict the idea that tasks around the house are to be done as part of familial upkeep, leading to the possibility of children only helping out around the house if money is the end result. I am keeping this thought in the back of my mind as we try out this idea, but for our family personally, I see it as a way to introduce the concept of income and reinforce all mathematical concepts associated with money by using it as a application platform for counting, addition, subtracting, grouping, multiplication, number scales and even decimals as their knowledge builds.

There are numerous free chore charts online that anyone can use and we choose a different one every week depending on the mood of my children at that particular moment. I then print them out and have them print out their chores for the week:

I have found that my son is a "reluctant printer". That is to say that he truly detests any sort of worksheet making him rewrite the same letter or word over and over again-as do I. So I try to find ways (at least one) on a daily basis to incorporate printing into something he enjoys doing-in this case, getting set up to make more money.

When we put them up on the wall, they are accompanied by a second sheet that has the value of each chore on a per day basis:

They have a visual to look at every single time they go near their chore chart that contains the image of the coin, the written denomination, the name of the coin and its decimal or numerical value. Although neither child understands the concept of decimals, they do understand that "after the dot means cents, before the dot means dollars". In other words, they are gaining some prior knowledge based in a mathematical application that will fair them well when they are ready to learn all about number scales and decimals.

At the end of every week, we add up how much money they have made, denomination by denomination and then as a sum. Depending on how the day is going, we also group them, stack them, and play a game called "trade you" where they cash in their denominations for another type of coin-right now they are both obsesses with Toonies, so they count their allowance up until they reach $2 and then trade me for a Toonie.

I know it may seem like an awful lot of work both for them and for me-typically there are around 10 lessons surrounding the concept the numerical skills associated with operations of money up to $100 and 8-10 lessons on decimals (including fractions) in the grade 4 Ontario curriculum (Number and Numeration Strand)-and of course there is some introduction in grade 3 and building on concepts in grade 5 and onward. However, one of the biggest complaints surrounding the public school curriculum is the lack of time allotted to teaching key concepts in a inquiry-based deeper understanding kind of way. I figure if they even grasp some of what we are doing week after week, month after month then they may have, at the very least, the prior knowledge and experience needed to navigate through this rapid-fire curriculum they may encounter in the future if public school becomes part of their educational pathway! So as long as they enjoy it-and they really do right now-then I will continue to cash in their interest!