Book of the Week - If You Give a Mouse a Cookie

This book is a follow up to yesterday's port Rich People will Always have cooler Stuff.









If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Joffe Numeroff






Quick Synopsis



A little boy offers a cookie to a mouse which starts a cause and effect adventure all through the house. The mouse asks for one thing after another until finally coming full circle back to the cookie



How to Teach Money to Kids with this Book



Some people like this little mouse will never be satisfied. If you get them one thing, they are going to want something else to go with it. I thought this was a great book to start the discussion about why sometimes I say no to different purchases. I used the example of Mega Blocks. My son received a Mega block dump truck for his birthday, but I took it back to the store. He didn't really notice, but my daughter did, and she wanted to know why, especially since it was free, why didn't we just keep it.

Well, if we keep the dump truck, you are going to want to have the blocks that go with it, and if we get the blocks, then you are going to want the castle set that goes with the blocks. So it makes since to just not get the dump truck in the first place.

If we take the dump truck back, they will give us money back, and we can use the money to buy something that is already on our list. Plus, if we start getting mega blocks, then we would run out of room for the toys that we have, and we would have to get rid of some of those toys.



I think seeing the cause and effect that this book emphasized was a great lesson in the what ifs of accumulating more that you need


While looking for more information, I stumbled on this site that has a whole evening of activities planned around this book. Your family could have a great time playing games together




http://www.hubbardscupboard.org/if_you_give_a_mouse_a_cookie.html



Do you have other ideas for how this book could be used to teach money to kids?

Check out more ideas at WFMW at We are That Family.