Financial Education For Kids

Yesterday I read an article about “Financial Education for Children’ in one of a local business newspaper, Kontan Weekly. It’s a simple guide for parents. I, myself, really concerned about how important it is for young children to understand the value of money in this era of credit cards and ATM.
I believe the importance in giving them financial “training”. The earlier we gave them the better result they’ve got and in the long run would save difficulties for them in managing their own money.

These are the steps to start:
Parents as a role model.
Did you remember how was your parents managed their money when you were kid? Then take a look at their financial condition now. However they are our first role model in forming our way of thinking about money. Maybe you would follow your successful parents in managing money or vice versa. For me, I really turn to the different 'direction' from them since I don’t want to follow their mistaken.
From the beginning of this year I’ve started to share with my 2 teens about our financial condition. It doesn’t matter for them to know it since they’ll learn something. My hubby and I feel free to discuss with them where we want to invest our money and why we did it or for what reason we’d spent the money into this or that…

Stop to save money in piggy bank. Teach them how to spent money.
That’s true. Piggy bank would not give financial education to your kids. It only teaches your kid to put in the coin or $$ into a narrow space. Kids should understand money is a legal payment device. It means money should have to be spent :). Kids should understand shopping is necessary, but it doesn’t healthy if we did it to much!
With my family -at the end of the kids’ school year- we usually go for traveling and at that moment they could spend their saving money (often it comes from their all year long extra ‘snack’ money that we gave them weekly and from our “rewarding” present if they did something good and special). But still spending in a moderately way.

Teach them how to earn money
For you that already have kids, surely we had ever got these questions:
“Mom, if you don’t have enough money why shouldn’t you go and get some money from that ATM booth?” or “You could scratch your card, isn’t that easy Dad?”.
You need to tell them money comes from hard works and we save it in a bank. ATM or credit cards just a kind of card to access the money we’d saved before. (for a 3 – 5 aged kid usually need a longer time to make them understand). I often show to my kids when I need to transfer some money for paying bills at the ATM.
So, there is no ‘money tree’, honey. But you know what, once my 4 year old kid saw an Angpao Tree and asked me a question when we were shopping at the mall around Chinese New Year, “Mom, there is a real money tree here. You said it doesn’t exist”. Ha ha …
Sometimes learning to start a ‘little business’ could be fun for teens. I’ve ever posted to this blog about my daughter sold her own made name cards and how my 2nd boy often run out of money. Last week he made a good progress and we’re happy for him. This the ‘story’ goes….
Last week end we all go to Makro -a wholesaler place- to do monthly shopping for home supplies. The he saw a pack of eraser -contain 40 ones- for only Rp 8.000,- (about less than 1U$). “How cheap”, I said, but does it good?
“May I have it, mom?” he asked for permission. I’ll agree. At home he tried the eraser and said it was a real good quality.
The next day after he arrived from school, he gave back my Rp 8.000 because he had sold them to his friends for Rp 1.000 each. He sold out 37 pieces; keep the 3 pieces rest for him and 2 of his siblings. Gosh…he gained Rp 29.000 !
Sure he was glad and spent part of the money for an action figure of a Japanese comic hero. It was his first ‘selling’.

Well, the financial education never comes to the ending. All the good habit should start from the very young at ages. Also don’t forget to remind them about the habit of giving and sharing to the needy. Good luck!

The BLUE Cake

Just a moments ago, I opened the refrigerator trying to find something to eat for my breakfast. Hehe.. actually it was almost 10 am, I was busy blogging and forget to eat until my stomach made a "rumble" sound. Usually I don't have 'real' breakfast, just a huge glass of fruit juice every morning. No,no..not for diet, only trying a more healthy habit in eating.

Ok, back to what I found in the fridge...
Cheese, chocolate, butter on the first rack. Oranges on the second rack...uh, nothing was interesting to fulfill my appetite. Aha.. on the corner, I found a small round BLUE icing sugar coated cake! I remembered that yesterday was Kyra's birthday, one of Ian's friend at school and he came back home with that small BLUE cake.
I took out the cake and sit in front of my PC again, ready for eating while writing (I've never been allowed this manner to my kids, hussh...don't tell them).
As I turned to look at the color of the cake, I became worried. Was the coloring food safe to little kids? Did the bakery really care about it? Why was Kyra's mom chosed the BLUE one? Actually the soft color of blue made the cake looked cute! Every little girl would love it.

Finally, I removed the BLUE cuttie coated and ate just the chocolate cake inside. I didn't dare enough to taste the BLUE icing sugar. Maybe I'm a kind of old fashioned mom that only love the real chocolate cakes or if I has to choose another color of cakes for my kids, I turned to nature yellow color, I mean a butter cake or a cheese cake. That's all. Sometimes I chosed fruit top coated pastry as long as I think the fruits was real, not fancy fruits made of sugar. I still think the food coloring doesn't good enough to my kids health.

What about you ? It would be great to hear other moms' point of view about the coloring food.

Mom, The First Teacher

As a mom of 3 from a nation that English is not our mother-tongue, I've a dream to bring the kids up in an atmosphere where English is introduced from their early childhood life.

With the 1st and 2nd it's a little bit difficult on trying because I didn't start to speak English with them from the beginning of their life. They don't speak English voluntary in family. My husband and I often used many tricks to motivate them in speaking English.

With the 3rd is a little bit different although at the end he didn't speak English to us voluntary too. He he..
He goes to a Montessori school since aged 3 (to fulfill my desire in fact..) that has totally different method of teaching than the usual national curicullum in public school, where his 2 older sibling went. At that school he has an English speaking environment from the first day. Now almost 5 on next July, I see and feel he has a better improvement in speaking English than the 2. His teacher said he's very active in speaking at class with his friends and the teacher. He likes to describe funny things and what he did with his 2 older siblings at home to them.

I always try to support and encourage him by making conversation in our way back home from school. The topics could be anything, from what we saw at the street or just telling him what I had done today or asked him if there was special matter at his school. Sometimes (when he forgot I'm his mom) he would answer in English, but most of the times always in Indonesian. First I feel a little bit confused why he won't speak English a lot with me..since I knew from his teacher he always did to everybody at school (I even did a spy on him to fulfill my motherhood curiosity if it was true or not, ha ha ha...).

Once I asked him why he wouldn't speak in English with me or his father (because when we speak in long sentences and I often did in purpose, ha ha .. then he could answer or make good comment of it, but in Indonesian! It means he clearly understand what we're talking)
You know what he said…
“Ma, it’s surely different! English is used at school, with you Indonesian.” Hah?!
What should I say? He has already known English was not our mother tongue.
Kids are really smart, aren’t they?

So far.. I quite satisfied with his progress at school as long as I’ve got good report on him from his teacher. ..
or as long as I could heard he speaks to himself in English while he plays Lasy or Lego blocks at home.
Sometimes when my 3 kids play together and the 2 big kids busy talking to each other, didn’t consider him then he would talk loudly in English to get their attention back. He did it! Usually both of his siblings would get silence a moment, smile and said, “ Listen, listen…he speaks English”. Then they play again together. Hahaha…

I’m not expert in English and I do ever worry -as many teachers do- that the “student” (my boy) will complain about my pronunciation or grammatical ‘errata’ I made. But he won’t ! He has very high tolerance even if I makes dozen mistakes or has to open my Alfa Link dictionary a hundred times. He simply doesn’t care. He still thinks his mom is the best, ha ha…Of course, I should confident as a mom since I’m his first teacher he’s got.

I just want to share with you, all the mom of 1–5 years old kids -since English is not our mother tongue-, never feel shy to speak English with your little ones. Let’s open the manual books and feel ‘free’ to start teaching English to them. This is the right moment while they’re still in early childhood and while you’re still in ‘love’ with learning process too..
Enjoy learning, enjoy teaching and good luck !

Good Days, Bad Days..

Becoming a mother is the only job in the world that has no leave even for just one day. Maybe I could get off from kids and hubby for a moment, an hour or a day, but still keep busy in mind remembering them. Never really 'free' like the way when I take a leave on my job at preschool and could 'erased' all the stuff linked to it perfectly from my mind. That's why (maybe..) becoming a mother sometimes could turned me "crazy" because of no leaving times....

I believed that's true. There always be some good days and bad days in my motherhood experiences for almost 13 years. (Gosh...how I could stand for so many years!)
There are days when I feel very proud and grateful to be a mom for my 3 kids (sometimes 4 when my hubby turn in to).
Like what happened yesterday when I emerged from a shopping trip with hubby and the 3kids. I don't know if it was because the pleasant of the May breezed afternoon or the warming heart I had at the moment, but it remind me how great the day had been. Usually on this days I couldn't resist to hold my husband's arm or made a call or a sms just to let him know how much I love him and appreciated on what he has done to me and kids. Of course I love these kind of days...

Unfortunately, there ia another kind of day.....
The day when I could turned into a "monster" to the 3 little angels. A day when i seem to be loud speaking, irritable, impatient and unsympathetic with them. Truly, I hate those days. I know kids also have their good days and bad as well, like me normally, and it should be my responsibility for any inappropriate behaviour or poor examples I may exhibit to them.

I imagine this morning if there's a potion that could enable me to have good days more than bad days. A kind of potion that could helped me prepare my kids' endless parade of meals from breakfast till dinner with a bontiful joy; the messy they made at living room ... could inspired me to give thanks for many blessings; the forever chaos they made at the backseat of our car...could remind me of the beautiful easy listening songs I loved,.
ha ha ha... what a perfect mom it was!

But no, I don't want to be the one.
I just want to be me. Let my kids know I'm just normally human being with good moods and bad sometimes, could be a strong as well as a weak mom. Let them learn from that matter like the way I always learned being a mom to them. For me, motherhood is a continuous learning process forever. I just hope I could be 'a better me' day after day as a mom....

MOTHER

One of my friend from Readers Digest Indonesia sent this to me 2 days ago...
Beautiful.

If you have a mother
Treasure her with care
For you'll never know her value
Till you see her empty chair!

M - O - T - H - E - R
"M" is for the million things she gave me,
"O" means only that she's growing old,
"T" is for the tears she shed to save me,
"H" is for her heart of purest gold;
"E" is for her eyes, with love-light shining,
"R" means right, and right she'll always be,

Put them all together, they spell "MOTHER,"
A word that means the world

Happy mother's day!

New Hand Wash Basin

There was something interesting yesterday with the kids at preschool. All of them liked to wash their hands over and over again. Some of them also wash their face. They still asked the teacher at class to go out, but with lots and lots of smart reasonable reasons the teacher never faced before. Something like this "my hands are sticky of glue, there's a crayon marked at my face, miss I need to go out to pick my nose for a moment (gee..since when he need to go to out to pick his nose...usually he need tissue)", etc. They washed up not only before and after had their meal, but several times in a day. Some of them needed to change their outfit because had wet all over.

You know why they acted like that?
Because we have a new hand-wash basin with 3 taps at school since the old ones didn't sufficient anymore to accommodate their hand washing and teeth brushing activities.
But look the fact now..
Instead of decrease the long queue the new hand wash basin made longer queue than before! And the kids were happy to do that.
Gosh, I didn't guess before that a new hand wash basin could really made them very excited and happy like that! I think my plan to stick some instant cute pictures on the ceramic tiles at that area should be reschedule....
No need longer queue for this moment!

Digging Books!!

I just realized I haven't blogged or browsed for almost 5 days!
Gee..how could I?
Maybe because I was busy digging the books at the book expedition. Hahaha... Yes, I really mean "stir up and dig" at a stuck of books.
Last week there was a quite big book expedition at my town. Many publishers and bookstores participated. Eventually for couple of years since Soeharto didn't take hold as president, they could published any kinds of books with quite good price in this country. As a bookish surely I love this freedom ambiance.

Back to what I found at the expedition....
So many books. I took from the theme I loved 'till the ones that could add more wrinkles at my forehead, but still I took them because for the most important reason...
THE PRICE WERE CHEAP... ha ha ha
( as a mom of 3 I become more selective in buying stuff, always try to find good stuff with reasonable price, luckily if I could find ones with cheaper price).
That's what I mean, While I was going around the exhibition I found a crowded of people at one stand at the corner. Full of curiosity I went in the crowd and saw something written with red-big letter in one side of the partition "Rp 5000 - Rp 15.000" (only 5 - 10 U$). It was quite apparent to me the stand was selling imported and second hand books, maybe also the overstocked books from publisher.
I don't care with that as long as the books still in good condition. many of them still in plastic wrapped completed with their real price tags.
Oh..how I love this place!

I went there for 2 days in a row and spent at least 2 hours on the average before I picked up my son and you know what...for those 2 days I arrived minimum 15 minutes late at his school!
From 2 days being a book hunter I've got more than 10 good quality books that I've never seen before at local book stores here. I feel completely lucky and happy.
Still until this day, busy for reading all the books.