Three ways to teach kids about money and investing using Checkers Little Shop collectibles


Kids learn best through play. You don’t have to spend money on expensive toys and games to teach your children money and investing skills. The Checkers Little Shop promotion is now over and before the little collectibles end up at the bottom of the toybox or even worse in a landfill, here are three games you could play with your kids and have fun teaching them about money and investing at the same time: 

Needs vs Wants 

One or more players 

Age : 4+

Take an empty pillow case and dump all the Little Shop objects inside. Let your child pull out one Little Shop and say whether the item is a need or a want. If they are correct, they get to keep the item. If they are wrong, they have to put the item back into the pillow case. The child with the most Little Shop items at the end of the game, when the pillowcase is empty, wins the game. The learning outcome of this game is to help your child distinguish between needs and wants; a very important building block in the foundation of financial literacy.

Price is right!

Two or more players 

Age : 7+

Again, throw your Little Shop collectibles into an empty pillow case and have your child pull out one item. The kids need to write on an A4 white board or piece of paper what they think the price of the item is. The parent/teacher can look online to confirm the price of the grocery item. I think there are going to be lots of laughs when there are huge discrepancies of what your children think these items cost compared to the actual price. The child’s guess closest to the item’s price wins the piece. When all the Little Shop collectibles have been pulled out the pillow case, the child with most pieces wins the game. Through this game we able to make our children aware of what things cost these days.

Identify the company behind the product

One or more players 

Age: 7+

Take pillow case and throw all your Little shop items into it. Let the kids pull out each item and guess which manufacturer makes the product, for example, if they pull out Oros Orange Squash they must guess which company makes it, in this case it would be Tiger Brands. If they guess the company correctly, they get to keep the piece. If they guess incorrectly, they have to put piece back into the pillow case. The kid with the most pieces at the end of the game wins. 

A few additional questions you could ask your child to expand on their learning experience is: 

•Is the company JSE listed, privately owned or a foreign entity? 

•Group the Little Shop pieces according to the manufacturer.

•Name a competitor product of the item you pulled out of the pillow case

•Compare share price charts of the different manufacturers and performance over the years. 

The learning goal of this activity is to introduce your kids to investing and an awareness of different companies. It will set the foundation for your children of how to start researching companies that they are interested in to invest in the future. 

If you never collected Little Shop collectibles, don’t despair! All the activities above can be done with items around your household. Take a couple of cans out of your pantry, use clothes in your kid’s wardrobes and follow the instructions above. The most important thing is that you are spending time with your children and hopefully they treasure the lessons you are teaching them on financial literacy. Have fun! 


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