What a Grade 1 student in Ontario can understand about money, and what has to wait

Parents often ask us how young is too young to talk about money. The honest answer is that Grade 1 is early enough for some things and too early for others. A six-year-old can learn a great deal about money. They learn it in a different way from an adult, and some ideas will not land for a few more years.

Here is what the research says, what Ontario expects, and how we use both in the classroom.

What Ontario expects in Grade 1

Ontario's elementary mathematics curriculum has a financial literacy strand that starts in Grade 1. The Grade 1 expectation is short and specific. Students should "identify the various Canadian coins up to 50¢ and coins and bills up to $50, and compare their values."

That is the whole of it for the year. It is a sensible starting point. Recognising a dime, a quarter and a five-dollar bill is the ground floor for everything that follows.

What the research says about age seven

The clearest review we know of comes from researchers at the University of Cambridge. In 2013 Whitebread and Bingham reviewed how young children form money habits, for the UK's Money Advice Service.

Their main finding is that the foundations are in place by about age seven. Around that age, children start to understand that money can be exchanged for goods. They also start to "represent" value in their heads. A nickel is larger than a dime, and a younger child may think it is worth more. By around seven, most children can hold the idea that size and value are different things.

The same review is careful about what does not work. It says that teaching young children explicit financial knowledge on its own is "likely to be ineffectual." Children this age learn far more from experience, from play and from watching the adults around them. In the authors' words, learning from experience "is always more powerful than learning through instruction" for young children.

Delaying a reward is harder still. The review links it to executive function, the set of skills that lets a child plan, wait and resist an impulse. Those skills are still developing in Grade 1. Children can get better at waiting when adults give them simple strategies and a say in the choice.

What a Grade 1 student can understand

Put together, the research and the curriculum point to a clear list. A Grade 1 student can:

• name Canadian coins and small bills and put them in order of value
• understand that you give money and get something back
• sort needs from wants when the examples are concrete (shoes for school, a second toy car)
• save toward something they can see, such as a jar that fills up
• give a little to someone else, and see the giving jar fill too
• follow a simple rule about fairness, and keep a small promise

Each of these is something a child can hold, count or do.

What has to wait

Some ideas need more time. We leave these for later grades:

• An allowance as a wage. The Cambridge review notes that younger children are unlikely to understand an allowance as a form of wage. We introduce earning through things children can see, such as a class store, and build the idea of working for pay over Grades 2 to 4.
• Interest. Money that grows while you wait is abstract. In our curriculum, simple interest appears in Grade 6 and compound interest in Grade 7.
• Credit. Borrowing now and paying later depends on planning over weeks and months. Debit versus credit starts in Grade 5.
• Long-range saving. A six-year-old can save for a toy in a few weeks. Saving for something a year away is a different skill.

A Grade 1 child can still hear these words at home or in class. We simply do not expect them to understand them yet, and we do not test them on them.

How we teach it

Our Grade 1 year follows the research. Children handle real coins. They sort, count and compare. They fill a saving jar and a charity jar. They run a small class store and see that money changes hands for something of value. Later in the year they meet simple ideas of fairness and agreements, and in November they make and sell something small as a class.

Every class runs for one hour. The teacher spends 20 minutes teaching, students spend 20 minutes on a paper worksheet, and the last 20 minutes are a review together. Most classes have 10 or fewer students. The month-by-month plan for Grades 1 to 4 is on the Little Genius program page.

What you can do at home

Parents carry much of this, and many feel unready for it. In a 2023 TD survey of 1,008 Canadian parents, 70% said they did not feel very prepared to support their child's financial literacy at home.

The research suggests the bar is lower than it feels. Young children learn by watching and doing. A few habits go a long way:

• Let your child pay with coins and count the change with you.
• Think out loud at the store. "We need milk. We want cookies. Today we are buying the milk."
• Keep three jars at home for spending, saving and giving.
• When they want something, help them work out how many weeks of saving it would take.
• Give them a small choice about a reward, then help them wait for it.

A few minutes, some coins and a parent who talks through their choices are enough.

Starting with coins and jars is starting at the right size.

Sources

• Ontario Ministry of Education, Mathematics curriculum, Grade 1, Strand F: Financial Literacy (F1, Money and Finances). https://www.dcp.edu.gov.on.ca/en/curriculum/elementary-mathematics/grades/g1-math/strand-f/f1
• Whitebread, D. and Bingham, S., University of Cambridge, Habit formation and learning in young children, for the Money Advice Service (2013). https://altorwealth.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/the-money-advice-service-habit-formation-and-learning-in-young-children-may2013.pdf
• TD and Maru Public Opinion, survey of 1,008 Canadian parents of children under 18 (June 2023). https://stories.td.com/ca/en/news/2023-07-19-nearly-3-in-5-canadian-parents-frequently-worry-about-their