A Dime a Lesson: Why My Kids Earn Money for Schoolwork

When our kids were in elementary school, they would earn a dime per school lesson done well. This was an important component of our overall goal of teaching and rewarding work ethic in our virtual school environment.

I’m going to share how we did it, and then I’ll take some time to explain why we did it this way.  

Elementary School: A Dime a Lesson 

Every morning I would write the lessons for the day on the whiteboard. Each boy would have their own list. In the early elementary grades, that usually worked out to be about 7-10 lessons. Some of them would take longer than others to complete.  

As we would go through the lessons, each child had the opportunity to earn a smiley face or a frowny face. This wasn’t associated with how they did on the lesson. This was directly correlated with their attitude during the learning.  

If the lesson was completed with a good attitude and without excessive complaining, the child earned a happy face. However, if there was yelling, crying, arguing, defiance, or any other type of lousy behavior, the child would earn a sad face.  

If there were three sad faces on a day, the child didn’t earn any money for the day. They also needed to visit with the principal- Dad.  

Early Grades- Earning Money after every School Day

At the end of the day, I would bring out the coin drawer. Each child would go up to the board and count up his smiley faces. Then he would tell me how much money he earned. I would pass out the dimes, and we would enjoy counting up their pay for the day.  

The boys would then take their coins and decide which money jar they wanted to put them into. They had 3 jars, which were labeled give, save, and spend. It was great fun for them to put their coins in the different jars, listen to them clink, and watch their savings grow. We purchased these jars from Dave Ramsey along with his program on teaching children about money. The latest version of the bank is one clear box with three different sections on it.

Middle to Late Elementary School: Once a Week Pay

When the kids were in early elementary school, payday came at the end of the day. This was because I wanted to associate a good school day with immediate rewards. But, that isn’t how things work in the real world. We need to work for two weeks before we end up seeing a paycheck.

So, as the boys got older, we moved the payday to every Friday. They loved their paydays! We would keep track of the weekly happy faces, and then they would count them all up. The dimes really began to pile up, so we needed a new strategy. I would go to the bank and purchase gold dollar coins for them. They could trade in ten dimes to get a gold dollar.  

I could have used standard dollar bills, but there was something fun and special about the gold coins. They just loved earning them! Plus, they were durable and went through the coin slot better than a dollar bill. The newer version of the Dave Ramsey banks for kids has slots that accommodate bills, but ours didn’t.  

Middle and High School – Earning Money at the End of a Reporting Period

Once the kids hit middle school, we had established the standards of doing school at home for years. They knew the expectations and were getting their lessons done reliably. The OLS (online school system) changed in middle school so that I wasn’t doing the assignment grading anymore.  

Their virtual school teachers were now scheduling lessons and doing the grading. This provided us an opportunity to change how we paid the kids for their schoolwork.

We switched to a pay system that was based on report cards. Once the grades were finalized, we would all sit down at the kitchen table, and we would have a quarterly or semester payday. There was now a much longer delay between their work and a monetary reward.  

Middle school grades were worth less than high school grades. The more advanced the class, the more money it was worth.  

Once they enter college, they won’t earn money for their grades! It is just expected that because we will be financially contributing to their education, they must put the appropriate effort in. In fact, their personal financial contribution may go up if their grades aren’t meeting standards.

Why Did We Associate Academic Performance With Money?

One of our family sayings is “Hard Work, Achieve Goals, Good Things”. This is prominently displayed on our staircase as a part of our family proverbs.  

It was vital to us that we teach work ethic early in our home. We wanted the boys to associate hard work with earning money. 

This is how it works in real life. We go to work so that we can earn money and pay our bills. If there is money left over after paying for the required elements of life, then there is room for fun.  

Our kids didn’t earn an allowance. They had the opportunity to earn money by doing their school well. Additionally, there was always the chance to earn extra money by helping me out.

These were usually extra chores that needed to be done around the house. 

Here is a silly and kind of gross example. We used to have a terrible fly problem in the summer at our old house. Perhaps something died in the attic? I never did figure it out, but it was a real issue in the summer.

I would come home from an outing with the boys, and there would be easily 10-20 flies on the sliding glass door or on the kitchen window. They needed to die! So, each boy could grab a flyswatter and take care of the problem. I paid 10 cents a fly.  

They earned money, and we had fewer flies in the house.

This was a gross job but one that needed to be done. With the motivation of pay, I had eager workers.  

Maintaining Motivation for Homeschool is Hard

It is tough to stay motivated, day after day when we are doing school at home. There have been many days when I just didn’t feel like teaching. 

There were days when the lessons were challenging, and the boys didn’t want to do them. They had their favorite subjects, the ones that they would spend hours on. But then, there were the difficult ones, the ones they hated.

The pay was the same for their lessons whether they loved them or hated them. This is the case in our work. We have things that we love about our jobs and then things that we hate. It is all part of the reality of work.  

Dad Worked at Home- Now The Boys Did Too

When the boys were too young to do a “real job”, we treated school as work. They needed to get their work done before they could have fun.

It was an easy thing for us to teach because they had seen and heard Dad working in his office. They knew that Dad needed to finish up his calls and emails before he could come down and play with them. They also knew Dad made money when he worked. Now it was their opportunity to do work and earn money.

In a home learning environment, there isn’t the same kind of classroom motivation that can occur with many children all learning together.  

It was easy for me to focus on school when I went to school because my toys were at home. Plus, my teacher had expectations and rewards. I didn’t earn money in school for doing lessons, but I did love my gold stars and my academic awards.  

In the homeschool environment, I needed a motivation system that would allow me to keep going on the hard days. I didn’t want it to be too complicated. I could have bought stickers, toys, treats, or candy. But, that was a lot of reward inventory to maintain. If I used money, the boys could use it to buy whatever they wanted.

The Educational Reason I Used Money

One of the important math concepts that is taught in elementary school is money. The kids need to learn all about the coins, their worth, and how to make change.

Every time they traded in ten dimes for a dollar, the boys were learning and reinforcing money concepts. They were using real money every day and so those lessons were really easy. Also, they were using their coins and dollars at the store to buy their rewards. They quickly learned how to count all the types of coins.

Money math was no problem for my kids!  

I loved to watch my boys grow in their confidence with money. They have had the ability to save for big purchases and also see what happens when they spend too much of their money on candy. 

At first, hard work meant earning dimes by completing lessons every day. As they have grown, they have had the opportunity to earn money by working for neighbors and in a traditional job.  

It may not be completely conventional to pay elementary kids a dime per lesson completed. But, for our family, it was a stepping stone to teaching financial responsibility, goal setting, and work ethic.