Parents and kindergartners: money and number, practices, concepts and skills

Abstract

<p>The purpose of this study was to examine an exploratory model to explain the interactive relationships among parents' number and monetary practices, and their kindergartners' number concepts, monetary concepts, and monetary skills. The 207 kindergartners participated in three number and monetary tasks during clinical interviews. Each child's father or mother completed two kinds of home practices questionnaires. By using path analysis through LISREL 8.12, the results showed that kindergartners' use of money was significantly influenced by their number concepts (i.e., cardinality) and knowledge of coins (i.e., knowing the coin names and coin values). Kindergartners' cardinality benefited their acquisition of knowledge of coin values. They learned numbers representing small amounts to large amounts, understood the coin names before the coin values, and were able to complete matching paying prior to the transformation paying. Parental direct money teaching strategies had a positive impact on kindergartners' acquisition of knowledge of coin names. Kindergarten parents who reported more frequent direct teaching of numbers also reported more frequent direct teaching of money with their children. No relationship was found between parents' number practices with kindergartners and kindergartners' number learning, and there was no effect of parents' monetary practices with their kindergartners on kindergartners' monetary use.</p>