Money Money Money

Andrew brought home a large bag of loose change last month, and before I took it to the Coin Star machine to get it counted and turned into a grocery store gift card (no 10% counting fee if you do it that way!), I decided that Sonia might think it was fun to play around with all the coins. 

She doesn't really see coins a whole lot....  I normally pay for everything with my debit card, and even if I do use cash, Sosini is usually paying attention to 500 other things in addition to what Mommy is doing.

I had fun pawing through the pile, pulling out the state quarters and showing Sonia the pictures.  A surprising amount of them have animals in their pictures, which thrilled our little animal lover.

Now when Sonia sees me pay for things with cash, hopefully she'll make a tiny connection with this pile of metal she played with that one time....

As an accountant, I can't believe it took me this long to come up with this idea for a fun toddler activity!  I know coins are theoretically a choking hazard, but Sonia is long past the stage of putting everything in her mouth (plus I warned her that if one coin went into her mouth, we'd put them all away instantly).

(Don't worry-- we washed our hands thoroughly after we put all the coins away.)