We’re excited to help you start your children along the path to healthy finances.
Why study Wealth?
Personal finances, career development, and economic literacy are of foundational importance to the wellbeing of every adult, yet schools place shockingly little emphasis on these topics. As we’ve mentioned in our overview of the Destination Method, we consider Wealth to be a subject of similar developmental significance to more traditional subjects like History, Math, and English.
Nearly all of us have made foolish choices with our time and money that we now regret, and the number of lives that have been ruined by poor financial decisions is truly vast. By making Wealth education a regular part of your children’s entire PK-12 education, you will be granting them a gift that will significantly improve their lifelong happiness, financial security, and charitability.
Our PK Wealth recommendation
To begin a young child’s journey into Wealth education, we can think of no better choice than What Do People Do All Day?, written by celebrated children’s author Richard Scarry.
What Do People Do All Day? is a collection of vibrant short stories describing various commercial and economic activities within a fictional town of colorful creatures. From exploring how electricity is delivered to homes, to explaining the hard work that goes into growing food, Scarry’s book does a fantastic job of giving children an overview of the many different careers required to keep a town running.
How is this book going to teach my child about wealth?
What Do People Do All Day? focuses on the creation and use of money and resources, which is the key concept underlying all Economics studies. Within the first few pages, Scarry offers a lovely tale of how money passes through the hands of multiple townsfolk as they buy and sell goods. The book goes on to provide examples of the creation and distribution of important resources, such as water, wood, coal, and electricity.
Finally, the book does a great job explaining possible careers. Although PK children are still many years away from needing to make a career choice, it is never too early to help them understand the different paths they might take in their professional lives.
How should I use this book?
Read a story a day. Talk about the pictures with your child. When you have finished the book, simply start again from the beginning. Each page is so incredibly busy that re-reads will not feel at all tedious – in fact, there is a good chance you find new details with each read!
Keep repeating the book until you feel your child is ready for something more advanced.
Readability
The text is simple enough for a child of any age to grasp; most of the explanatory work is done by the illustrations, which display seemingly complex processes in a clean, simple way. For example, Scarry portrays a house that is under construction and uses it to illustrate the installation of a plumbing system. Your child will see how a water heater is connected to sinks and baths through the home’s pipes, but won’t be bombarded with large amounts of text explaining the details. Scarry understands that with young children, it is much better to show than to tell.
Availability
You can purchase What Do People Do All Day? from our online bookstore using the link below.
