Back-to-School Bargain Hunting
Figure out the best way to spend your back-to-school budget.
What you need:
• sale flyers
• coupons
• paper
• pen or pencil
• calculator
What to do:
1. With your child, make a list of supplies she needs for school. If her school distributes a shopping list, review it with her.
2. Explain to your child that she has a certain amount of money that she can spend on supplies (make sure that it is adequate to purchase the supplies she needs) and that it is up to her to decide how exactly to spend it.
3. Go through sale flyers or circulars and decide where to do your shopping. Clip coupons if possible. Consider which stores have the best prices, the supplies she likes, and so forth.
4. Go shopping! Your child will need to keep track of how much she is spending as she goes. She will also need to make decisions — will she spend money on cool notebooks, but get ordinary pens? Or perhaps she'll forgo the cool notebooks in favor of fun markers.
5. As an extension, use the same process (but with a larger budget) to shop for back-to-school clothes.
Learning benefits:
• provides practice with arithmetic and budgeting skills
• supports planning and organization
• encourages creative problem solving
