Unfortunately money doesn’t grow on trees. I really wish it did. Because of this painfully obvious fact, when you have a large family like ours, budgeting is necessary.

Turning homeschool lessons into life lessons

As a homeschool mom I pride myself in teaching our kids not only book lessons, but life lessons. Budgeting is one of those lessons. Our home boasts six kids, and two adults which means a lot of eating is happening. All that eating can be expensive! I love turning our math lessons into life lessons so the kids were tasked with learning to budget. The assignment included making a menu (including breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks) for a week with a budget of $150.

Let the lesson begin!

Of course, I took them to one of my favorite stores EVER, Trader Joe’s. This was the perfect lesson for the kids. I wanted them to see firsthand how much work goes into creating a meal, budgeting for that meal, and most importantly not exceeding that budget. I was mostly hands off in this exercise because I wanted to see how well the kids would work together to get the job done.

If I’m being honest, they didn’t really need me anyway. Like most kids these days, they pretty much just used me for my money. In the end, I didn’t have to take out a loan to pay for the groceries, and the kids were pretty proud of themselves. Now if only I can find a way to make snacks last longer in our house, I’d be all set.

As usual, if you’d like to see how this budgeting exercise panned out, follow this link: Budgeting 101

Thanks for visiting,

Mommi Bella