Making Deposits in the Banks of Memories and Finance

"Each day of our lives we make deposits in the memory banks of our children." -Charles Swindoll.

This quote has been a favorite of mine since I first read it, when I was pregnant with my first child and dreaming of motherhood. It sums up the job of parenthood and the impact we have raising children. Each day, we are creating memories, good or bad ones. It's a reminder to keep our attitudes, our activities, our daily lives as positive as we can manage. The memories are being made each day regardless, so lets make each day, each deposit, count.

Last Friday at our homeschool co-op we made some great deposits of memories, fun and learning. We had a guest speaker come in for a special Teach Kids to Save Day. The kids were taught the three S’s of money, “Share, Spend and Save.” Nancy Martin, the bank manager at United Bank of Michigan, and friend of mine, led the class and it was awesome. A field trip to United Bank followed, where the students glimpsed the workings of a bank, teller duties, how the drive-up tube and counterfeit light worked as well as a walk-in look at the vault and safety deposit boxes.




During the class presentation, Martin led the kids through examples they came up with for each category of share, spend and save. For share, the list included suggestions such as church, the humane society, and the Red Cross. For spend, Martin also had the students examine ways their parents had to spend money, on food, clothes, home repairs, and gasoline—with ideas of ways they can help around the house to make meeting those needs easier on the family. For save, Martin broke down the list of goals into things that take either a short time to save for, like a toy or video game, versus things that take a long time, such as college or a house.

Dollar sign pencils and “Moon Jars,” small banks divided into the three categories they had learned were a big hit. My daughter is putting a lot of thought into what she will use each category for. She has decided she wants her "Share" bank to go toward one of her favorite charities, the Animal Shelter. It was a wonderful day, filled with lessons we'll be banking for a long time to come.

Presidents Day Extravaganza!

We're having fun with President's Day and Washington's Birthday this week in our homeschool by celebrating and learning about George and Abe. We made powdered wigs out of paper bags, cotton balls and baby powder and we made Abe Lincoln hats out of large black construction paper. Books from the library included Scholastic's "George Washington, America's First President" by Justin MCory Martin and "George Washington, A Picture Book Biography" by James Cross Giblin. The two we got for Mr. Lincoln were my favorites, which were "Abe Lincoln, The Boy Who Loved Books" by Kay Winters and "Abe Lincoln's Hat" by Martha Brenner. (Did you know Lincoln kept important papers and letters in his hat?)


Aside from coloring pages and various activities, another cool thing I did as we talked about the ways we honor and remember the Presidents with coins, etc. was I printed out a cut-out of the front of the quarter with Washington, had my kindergartner color and glue it to the back of a paper plate. Then printed out 25 penny cutouts with Lincoln and had her count them out and glue them to the front of the paper plate to practice how many pennies equal a quarter to make 25-cents. Then the kids stacked the real coins on the opposing sides of the plate (real pennies on the paper quarter side, real quarter on the paper pennies side.) It was a lot of fun and gave great money, counting and placement practice.


Tomorrow we're making a Lincoln log cabin out of either popsicle sticks or pretzels, and we'll be cooking a banana cake to celebrate Washington's birthday. God Bless the USA!