The study of economics and how it affects us starts in the home. Let’s take a look at how we can teach economics in a basic form to our home school children and it is a totally free resource! You can start with what you do with the money you receive. What bills you choose to pay and when. What you purchase. How much you save. Having your children understand these basics will help them to balance their own economic future. Involving your children in the everyday money expenditures is the first step.If you are buying your home how much goes to principal and how much goes to interest? Do you pay a little extra every month and what does this do to the amount of interest you will pay on your home? When we were purchasing our home I started adding just $10 extra to each payment and our home was paid off five years sooner than expected. This saved us a tremendous amount of interest!
When you go to the grocery store do you purchase the preboxed add the meat casserole meals or do you purchase the pasta separately and build your own? Have your children figure the cost difference for doing it your way. Do you purchase the pre-shredded cheese or blocks of cheese and shred it at home? When items are on sale, that you use a lot of, do you purchase extra to put on the shelf for later use? Having your children make a shopping list to cook the meals for a week and giving them a budget to purchase the needed items is a great way to inspire them to really look at what you spend. If they manage to come in under budget and still create healthy meals, set the extra money aside for a special treat in the future.
How do you heat your home and what does it cost you? In the winter does your heat bill sky rocket? We heat with wood and fortunately my husband runs a small sawmill so our heat bill is small but labor intensive! If you heat with electric or natural gas then in the winter months it can be critical to understand why the doors must not be left open! Do you save money by putting on a sweater and turning down the thermostat? What does it cost to heat your home on a daily basis and how has that changed since last year? Does it help to turn off the lights when you leave a room? What does it cost to run the light bulb for an hour? You can make a game out of saving a few dollars every month if your children understand why you set certain standards for using these resources.
Once your children have a firm grasp of your personal economics you can start expanding out their studies to your city, county, and country. How are those entities expending the tax dollars you pay? How do local businesses help the economics of your area? Do your local businesses manufacture goods that are purchased by different locations? How has the current economic situation affected them? We will look at some of these issues in a future post. Meanwhile, help your home school student understand the money choices you make and inspire them to make solid choices for themselves. After studying your own home economics, give them a further view of how the impact you and them in this post onteaching economics in the home school part 2.
All through scohol I was mostly lonely. In the elementary years, my friends were the kids who lived on my street. In jr. high, I found a group of misfits to socialize with, but not at scohol. In high School I withdrew from the pressure to “be” in a group, and was left alone in my own group. The best part of scohol for me was band. I was able to really share experiences with the same group of people over several years as part of something bigger than myself. My only good memories of my teenage years are from the band: the accomplished exhaustion from long marching rehearsals, the exhilaration of the applause after a performance, the pride in our show and our appearance, the long bus rides and contests around the country. I never got particularly close to anyone in band, but it was a lively community, not just a bunch of humans grouped by age in cinder block classrooms meeting objectives. I attended a rather large high scohol and I can remember the loathsome feeling I got walking through the sea of people between classes- “people, people, everywhere, but not a friend for me.” I recently left my huge church of 5 years for the same reason. I was fairly active in teaching Sunday scohol and attending bible studies. But I would walk through the halls that were bursting with friendly faces, but there was no connections, no true friendships, only patronizing smiles and hollow edifications.Socialization, as in close friends and rich relationships, is not automatic anywhere. It’s something that is being harder and harder to come by as our society is continually isolating people from each other and globalization creates homogenized towns that can barely be differentiated from each other. I think real socialization happens within a community, not just any group of people thrown together in a scohol, church, neighborhood, or city limits.