0  | 

I found this helpful Thank You! Your vote will be tallied soon!

The girls' money bin. The best way to save for a rainy day.

We have a bunch of little plastic bins we use to store toys.  They have cute pink lids decorated with butterflies.  

One is a miscellaneous container and holds some favorite toys that don't quite fit anywhere else.  Another is for my daughters' collection of cars from the animated movie "Cars" (these are hard-won "poop toys" -- more about that in another post).  Yet another contains sticks, stones and money.

When we go out on walks, the girls somehow end up coming home with sticks and rocks in their pockets.  The gas station sign at the corner used to sit in a fully-stocked bed of rocks ...

Mixed in with sticks and rocks is play money, lots of coins and crumpled-up bills.  Sometimes, when life is especially busy, my husband and I hide this particular container away in a dark corner for a couple of days because its contents represent such a giant clean-up challenge.

It's funny to see what my three-and-a-half-year old daughters do with their money.  They don't really seem to have an awareness yet that we exchange money for goods (how often do we really use cash nowadays?), but they do know that we take money out with us.  So, they play with the money by stuffing it into little bags to carry around with them.  Stuff in a couple of rocks and sticks, and they're good to go.

They do understand, however, that we get money at a "money place" in town.

Wouldn't it be nice to always have this understanding of money -- we get money at a money place, keep it wadded up in a bin, and then play with it around the house.  And most appealing, the money only diminishes when a bill is torn, or when a coin gets lost in the sofa cushions.