St. Louis Fed Adds Q&As to Help Parents Teach Econ, Finances

Parents can teach economics to their children while reading popular children’s books, thanks to a new set of free resources from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Specialists who produce the St. Louis Fed’s Econ Lowdown education materials crafted a series of questions and answers to accompany well-known books aimed at toddlers to tweens.

Parents can read the books with their children and then use the Parent Q&A Resources to discuss economic topics. The result is an easy and fun way to teach children about saving, spending, personal finance, and more.

“The approach is twofold: Parents have a tool to broach a difficult topic, and children get to enjoy reading with their parents. Both will benefit from discussing these basic economic concepts,” said Mary Suiter, assistant vice president and economic education officer at the St. Louis Fed.

Parent Q&As for 10 children’s books are posted online at: https://www.stlouisfed.org/education/parent-resources.

Book titles include Alexander, Who Used to Be Rich Last Sunday; Just Saving My Money; and Little Nino’s Pizzeria. Q&As to accompany nine more books will be released this spring.

Econ Lowdown offers free pre-K to college classroom lessons about economics, personal finance, money and banking, as well as about the Federal Reserve itself. Similar free resources are available for parents and the public at large.

For more information about Econ Lowdown, visit https://www.stlouisfed.org/education.