It’s common knowledge that getting children to pay attention and listen, even to things they’re interested in, is a losing battle. Teachers and parents face that reality every day in the name of learning. Trying to keep elementary school children interested when you’re talking about saving money and budgeting? Nearly impossible.

Even faced with such a daunting task, we feel that teaching kids about money early on is very important. Because of that, this year we teamed up with the Twin Cities Road Crew to put together a program for elementary schools that was not only educational, but fun for the kids too.

So what do you do to make saving money fun, especially for a large group of energetic kids? You have to throw in some fun music, an entertaining emcee, dancing, and of course, games. The staff at the road crew brought a higher level of energy than even the kids and broke the program up into manageable chunks with dancing in between the learning.

The best part, in my opinion, was one of the games. Two teachers were chosen and put on piggy bank costumes and then two teams of kids competed to “save” the most money by attaching play money to their teachers’ costumes with clothes pins. It was hilarious and both the teachers and the students had a great time.

I wish that I would have been able to go to a program like that when I was in school. It makes the assemblies I went to seem so boring.