It’s probably no surprise to you that my family discusses money openly and frequently. In fact, one of my children approached me in the middle of chore time to interrupt with an idea that just had to come out of their head and be shared.

My children know that they have a hard time with executive functioning, and so we regularly try to verbalize and repeat daily necessities. That includes doing our school work in a timely fashion, starting our day with morning self-care chores, and drinking our milk before leaving the table.

We are also a Montessori family: we use materials that we can pick up and manipulate to help us understand the world around us better. For example, to learn math, we use beads on something like a little metal safety pin, where one can see how many beads are being used at a time. So in order to add 1 + 4 = 5, we would put down a red single (one) bead, and a yellow four bead stick, and then have the child count all of the beads to then make it equal a light blue five bead stick.

And larger bead chains, plates, and cubes are used to teach the concept and scale of large numbers such as 10s, hundreds, and thousands. The larger objects have more scale in what they look like, and what they feel like – both size and weight. This way a child may actually develop an intuitive sense that 1000 is 10 100’s, a valuable skill when assessing whether your addition and subtraction answers make sense.

Here was my child’s idea.

Start with a large, empty, clean, clear jar. Source ideas include:

• pickle jar
• large peanut butter jar
• cheese puff tub
• juice bottle

Then start practicing saving.

• Week 1 – put one (1) ONE penny in the jar every morning when you wake up.
• Week 2 – put one nickel in the jar every morning when you wake up.
• Week 3 – put one dime in when you wake up
• Week 4 – 1 quarter
• Week 5 – 2 quarters
• Week 6 – 3 quarters
• Week 7 – 4 quarters

To build that muscle more, do this instead of when you wake up, do it as you sit down to every meal.

• Week 8 and beyond – put 4 quarters in the jar at every meal

This gives you 7 weeks in which to build your savings habit, without it feeling overwhelming, and you can watch the money grow. And then from week 8 and beyond, you’re automatically saving $21 per week. If you have the budget and the desire to do so, you can then increase from there.

Q&A:

Q: Why aren’t we using paper money, like dollar bills, instead of multiple quarters? We would save money faster with bills.

A: Because a 10 dollar bill and a 1 dollar bill won’t give you different amounts of satisfaction and positive reinforcement when you look at them in the jar. That’s that Montessori context through your senses idea.

Q: What do you do when you fill up a jar?

A: At first, keep it there on the counter as encouragement, and start another jar right beside it. Once you get good at this habit, then set a goal that you want to save up for, such as a computer game, a new couch, or a trip to the water park, whatever motivates your family.

Q: What do I do if I don’t have a jar or bottle right now?

A: Start now anyway, while you are motivated. Start with a clear cup, which you likely have on hand, and you won’t overflow that for a number of weeks so you’ll have time to find a container. Feel free to approach a neighbor with your project if they have a larger family and therefore go through larger containers than you do, good neighborhoods are a wonderful support system.

Adding more Montessori to your life

How can you add more of this Montessori principle of being able to measure with your senses the more abstract concepts of life? What senses do you like to involve most?