Learning finance through chess

Children learn game of finance
By Paula Burkes
Business Writer

Gina Lowry, a sixth-grade math teacher at Heritage Hall, recently walked into the school’s locker room and found several football coaches tackling a mathematical brainteaser, with which they’d been wrestling for some time.

Lowry had the problem solved in three minutes. “It made them really mad,” she said, “but it was really funny!”

It wasn’t that the coaches couldn’t do the math. Rather, they had trouble setting up the problem to solve. Her students frequently make the same mistakes, Lowry said.

“Most of word problems are reading and understanding what the problem is telling you,” Lowry said.

“Kids today spend so much time using shorthand and texting on computers, cell phones and video games that they’re impatient,” she said. When she assigns word problems, Lowry requires her students to write the answers in complete sentences.

Lowry and other experts say parents can help bring out the financial wizards in their children. Among other things, they can start paying allowances early, expose their kids to chess and teach real-world finances.

“As soon as your youngster can understand the transaction involved in buying a lollipop, the child is ready to start learning about money,” said Sue Lynn Sasser, executive director of the Oklahoma Council on Executive Education. Children, Sasser said, learn most from watching their parents, whether it’s comparison shopping or computing the price per pound on goods.

Sasser recommends parents begin paying their children, at age 6 or 7, a weekly allowance.

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