Just the other day when I was getting ready to clip my Sunday coupons, I noticed my 2-year-old son was watching me from across the kitchen counter. “Mom, what are you doing?” I smiled and told him I was going to clip some coupons. “Can I help you?” he says. Sure. Why not? We can both be happy and productive together, right?

So I handed him a small (kid-friendly) scissors and watched in delight as he started clipping away. (Watch out for those barcodes, little buddy!)  :) And then it dawned on me. Something as simple as clipping coupons could provide several “teachable” moments.

Teachable Moment 1:  Saving Money

I began to talk about why we use coupons, and showed him the numerous items we could save money on. I explained that the more money we saved by using coupons, the more money we could put in our piggy banks. He got pretty excited about that.

Teachable Moment 2:  The Value of Money

I also began to explain that we can have nice toys, but we don’t have to pay a lot of money (or full price) for them. I’ve been taking my kids to Goodwill for years, and they are always excited to go and look at the toys there. I am even more excited about the prices. We have found several new toys there for a fraction of what they would cost in the store, including a $49.99 Lego Ninja Warrior set for a mere $5.99. Happy Kids, Happy Mom.

Teachable Moment 3:  Getting Organized

After we were done clipping coupons, we had quite the mess on the counter.  If he had had his way, I think he would have had more fun just whisking them all onto the floor at the same time.  However, since I told him that we were on a coupon “mission”,  I still had his attention. I explained to him that we were going to sort the coupons, for example, putting all of the yogurt coupons here, and all of the shampoo coupons over here.  Since I had gotten several Sunday papers, there were lots of duplicates.  We began to play a “Memory” coupon game where we tried to find as many matches as he could. Again, who thought coupon clipping could be so much fun?

Take these teachable moment opportunities and have fun with your kids. They love to help out, and they’re learning several valuable life lessons at the same time. Talk about a win-win situation.