“WalletPop's best books on personal finance for your kids - Walletpop.com” plus 1 more |
| WalletPop's best books on personal finance for your kids - Walletpop.com Posted: 02 Nov 2010 03:26 PM PDT  Parenting doesn't stop at potty training and teaching the kids how to tie their shoes. As your kids grow up, what is the best way to teach them about personal finance?At least 15 states require public high schools to offer personal finance courses, but that still leaves plenty of places for lessons on money management to fall through the cracks. Watching mom and dad pay the bills or balance a checkbook might click for some kids, but even in elementary school students can learn how to handle money through a parent's favorite way to teach: reading with their child. Either way, personal finance lessons are too often left to someone else to figure out. "I think schools are counting on the families to do that job and the families are counting on the schools to do that job, and it just doesn't get done," said John Daugherty, a CPA in Texas who helped start a sort of children's book club on personal finance in Texas schools. Figuring that elementary school children are "just on the cusp" to figure out money matters, as Daugherty put it, the Texas Society of CPAs started a financial literacy program in 2008. CPAs are available to read to students in the classroom, and they provide a recommended reading list for preschoolers through 12-year-olds, along with other materials. It's never too early to start, as Seira Wilson, an editor at Amazon.com books, told WalletPop in an e-mail: "When young children start engaging in imaginary shopping or putting coins in a piggy bank, it's a great opportunity to start talking about money. Currency identification and basic concepts of earning and spending (and the fact that money doesn't grow on trees!) are good starting points for younger children, and for older children, teaching the longer-term benefits of saving, planning, and interest can guide them toward smart financial decision making. Regardless of the age, a key is selecting books that will capture a child's interest and invite further discussion." There are only so many Arthur books a parent can read on how the aardvark earns an allowance and saves money, before they lose their mind and can quote D.W.'s lines by heart. Here are some good other alternatives that WalletPop found: Junior's Adventures Other than a few too many grammatical errors, the books follow a boy named Junior as he learns how to work, save, spend and give. My daughter's favorite is where junior learns to save his allowance for a long-term goal, such as a car or college -- a goal I keep trying to teach her with her weekly allowance and gift money from grandparents. The Sisters 8 One Hen: How One Small Loan Made a Big Difference Bunny Money This book was also recommended by Amazon's Wilson. "Children at this age are already learning about choices, so it's a natural progression to look at making choices with money," she wrote in an e-mail to WalletPop. The Money Tree The Zela Wela Kids Build a Bank Alexander, Who Used to Be Rich Last Sunday A Dollar for Penny Growing Money A Kid's Guide to Giving The Millionaire Kids Club Not Your Parents' Money Book Finance Whiz Kids As a child, Brustein was given a plan for her allowance by her parents. She had to save half of it, and if she saved more, it was matched by her parents as a way of teaching her how compound interest works. She also learned about stocks and mutual funds at home, picking funds that the family would buy and track together. She didn't read about personal finance as a child, she learned it first-hand. "As a kid, I don't remember reading any books about money," she said. Brustein admits that not every child is so lucky to learn money management skills at home, and says her books are targeted to parents "savvy enough to realize that this is something that will change their child's life." That's more than enough to ask from a book. Now go out and buy some before Santa Claus gets all of them. Aaron Crowe is a freelance journalist in the San Francisco Bay Area. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Joe Ely lyrics flavor kids' book - Houston Chronicle Posted: 02 Nov 2010 02:50 PM PDT Poor Buddy Brown. He musta notta gotta lotta sleep last night. If that tongue twister makes you want to hiccup and yodel, you may be a Joe Ely fan. Austin writer Wendy Hundere Parnell and her illustrator brother Gus Hundere have transformed the Lubbock singer's addictive 1977 tune ("Hot dog I gotta buzz in my shoe!") into a children's book, Musta Notta Gotta Lotta Sleep Last Night(Rocket Star Press, $14.95). Sure, there's a message about children getting enough sleep to function as mini-adults during their increasingly busy days, but mostly, the book's a lotta fun, fulla surprises for kids and their parents. Hey, a cat named Lucky rides a pig named Roadhawg, which of course belongs to Cool Rockin' Loretta, while a boy with "bright yellow hair" named Crazy Lemon stands on a chair and crows like a rooster — all allusions to other Ely songs. Hundere Parnell recently answered a few questions about the book. Q: How did the book come about? Was there a sudden brainstorm? A: When I got the idea to write the book, I was at a Joe Ely show at Gruene Hall in October of 2007. It really was an epiphany. My son was 4 and my daughter was 2 at the time, and I was reading picture books to them a lot. … So I guess I was in the mind-set of children's books when I was at the Ely show and I heard Joe singing the lyrics, "Musta notta gotta lotta sleep last night" and then singing about Buddy Brown going back to bed. I put the two songs together and thought, "What if we've got this boy, Buddy Brown, who's gone back to bed because he musta notta gotta lotta sleep?" … I couldn't shake the idea because I was intrigued by the challenge of making a story with these two songs, and then I wondered how many more Joe Ely references could I fit in the story? And could I make it a great story even if the reader doesn't know who Joe Ely is? Q: And there is a message, correct? That kids need to get their sleep to be productive school citizens during the day. Why that issue? A: With school starting so alarmingly early for kids and with sports and everything kids are doing, it becomes a challenge to get kids to get enough sleep. But my purpose in writing the book had nothing to do with wanting to send a message or teach anything. It was all about telling a fun story and entertaining kids and adults. As most parents know, kids will want you to read the same story over and over again, so I thought I could write a book that parents wouldn't tire of reading to their kids, and well, if they get a useful message out it then that's a bonus. Q: The book is hilarious, told in that rhyming Night Before Christmas rhythm. Were you just trying to come up with the nuttiest situations you could think of? A: I did try to make it as outrageous and zany a story as possible, just in an effort to keep the audience interested and entertained. I have always enjoyed and preferred the children's books where the story was told in rhyme, like Dr. Seuss' books, so rhyming text was important to me. Q: Tell me about all the other Joe Ely references. A: There are over a dozen references to various Joe Ely songs in the book, some more subtle than others - like "boxcars" and "hopes up high" and "twistin' in the wind." I even managed to get the word "fingernails" in the story, which is another great Joe Ely song. On my website, www.mustanotta.com, I have all of the book's references to Joe Ely's music listed, and parents can see just how many of them they caught. Of course, I couldn't fit all of the song titles to Joe's music in the story, like his wildly popular song Dallas (written by Jimmie Dale Gilmore). So if only to humor myself, I had my brother include in the book's illustrations a toy plane, a DC-9, of course. ("Have you ever seen Dallas from a DC-9 at night?") Q: What does Joe think of the book? A: When the book was finally done, and I gave him a copy, he was thrilled and said, "I'm going to read this book every night before I go to sleep." So I'd say to parents that are tired of listening to The Wheels on the Bus, get this book and get you some Joe Ely music! This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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