TORRINGTON – Last week, Goshen County Library held the first event for their new Thinking Money program. 

On Friday, young visitors of the library got to participate in The Piggy Bank Theatre. This is the first activity of multiple the library has implemented to help teach kids about money. Betsy Schmick, the children’s librarian, led the kids through this week’s event. 

According to the press release, Goshen County Library was one of 300 libraries chosen to receive the kit for this program by the American Library Foundation (ALA) and the FINRA Investor Education Foundation. The kit comes from “a collection of expertly vetted resources” in order to help children ages 3-12 learn financial literacy. 

The goal of the kit is to teach the youth about financial topics such as “earning, saving, spending, sharing and budgeting”. The makers of the kit wanted to make the difficult topic not only educational, but fun, to motivate financial responsibility early. 

September’s activity was The Piggy Bank Theatre. The Piggy Bank Theatre is a play with four acts. The kids in the play, and the kids in the library, get to choose if they would like to earn money, spend their money, or save their money. The play goes through a variety of situations where the children must choose what the responsible choice would be. 

The play begins with children learning about how when kids grow up, they get jobs where they earn money. This is where the earn, save, spend aspect comes in. The children all have paddles with the word earn and spend on each side of it. They hold up the corresponding side when the word is mentioned in the story. The librarian has a piggy bank to put a coin in when saving comes up. 

 In October, the kids will be playing Making Moooo-lah. Making Moooo-lah is a game in which the kids must manage a farm and make proper financial decisions in order to keep their farm running. 

The game begins by telling the children how they must help the farm and those who work there. It then asks if the child can make a profit and explains the meaning of the word. They give the kids a year, or 12 turns, to buy things for their farm. It then explains the “bank account” where the children can track their money and the meter which shows profit or loss. The game gives the children a variety of things to purchase from the store. The challenge is making the right choice. The game also does “wildcards” to help enforce positive or negative decisions. There are a number of financial terms the children may learn in the game, along with leadership and decision-making skills. 

The library had a pretty good turnout for the month of September. They are hoping the Making Moooo-lah event, scheduled for October 25 at 9 a.m., will reach even more kids in the community.