How to Help Your Child Out With their Economics Studies
Economics is a subject which is increasingly appearing in the school curriculum throughout the country. Educators are beginning to appreciate the importance that the next generation has at least a basic understanding of the economy and all the economic principles which underpin it.
Whilst it is not the most complicated at a basic-level, some children have a lot of trouble with it, especially as they are often being exposed to key economic terms and theories for the very first time. Basic economics is pretty easy to understand if you move away from the more abstract concepts and help them understand the basics behind it.
Picture: Imgur / Nnewel
Helping your kids learn economics isn’t just about reading from a textbook and trying to make sense of it; there are plenty of things which you can do to show them how economics works in practice, and they can then apply this to their school learning. There are also plenty of places online where you can get economics homework help, too, for the more complex things.
#1: Scrap Allowances
Teaching your children the value of money, and how they can come across it, isn’t done when you give them an allowance for nothing. Instead, pay them in return for completing chores around the house. By giving children an allowance, you give them a sense of entitlement, and we all know that doesn’t lend itself to learning about the value of money.
The earlier your children learn about the economic principle of trading their labor for capital gains, the easier they will find it to learn about other principles.
#2: Take a Trip to a Market
If you know of a market where there’s still an element of bartering, then taking them here and going stall-to-stall can help cement some of the basic economic principles they’ve been learning in class.
The interaction of sellers and buyers and seeing how prices differ between stalls can teach children a sense of price, perception, and see supply and demand in action. There is a lot to learn simply by watching what goes on in a market.
#3: Play Monopoly Together
The classic game of Monopoly teaches us a lot about basic economic principles without us even realizing it. Real estate, financial management (or mismanagement), rent, taxes, and investments are all things which come into play here.
If you play the game by the rules along with your children, you can expose them to these basic economic principles and then send them away to learn more about it from their textbooks. With economics, it’s all about providing contextual real-world examples—it is perhaps one of the few subjects which have an authentic and real-world application for every single citizen, unlike say science, which is only really useful for children who want to go into a scientific field.
Helping your children learn about economics isn’t about reciting paragraphs from a textbook, and there are plenty of real-world scenarios you can use to teach them about it in context.
Author: Veselina Dzhingarova
