Ages 8–12

Three jars: Spend, Save, Give

Split every dollar three ways before any of it gets spent.

About 20 minutes Read aloud, or read solo from about 10 Earns The Three Jars Badge

The Quest

For the kid

Three jars. Every time money comes to you, you split it between them before you spend anything.

Jar	What it is for	Looks like
Spend	Money for now	Snacks, stickers, small stuff
Save	Money for later	Something one week's money cannot buy
Give	Money for someone else	A gift, a fundraiser, a donation

Spend is genuinely yours. No permission, no lecture afterwards.

Pick your split and write it on the jars. Half / quarter / quarter is common. So is a third each.

Your mission

Make the jars real — three containers you can actually see. Jam jars, cut-down milk cartons, envelopes taped to the wall.

Decorate them, then put them somewhere you walk past every day. In a drawer is no good, because you need to watch the levels change.

Hard mode: work out how many weeks your Save jar needs to reach $50. Write that number on the jar.

The Parent Playbook

For you — read before you start

Money stops being one blurry pile and becomes three piles with three jobs. An eight-year-old cannot hold a budget in their head, but they can see that one jar is fuller than another.

Set two things this week.

How much, and how often. Pay weekly. A week is a length of time a child can feel; a month is not. Many families start at a dollar a week per year of age — there is nothing official about that number. Pick an amount you can pay every week without resenting it.

What the money now covers. Write the list down. If the Spend jar covers the treat at the pool, then the treat at the pool comes out of the jar and you stop paying for it separately.

What to say when the jar is empty

"Your Spend jar is empty."

"Money comes again on Saturday."

"Do you want to wait, or take some from Save and start that over?"

Ask the third one as a genuine question. They decide, and the cost is real either way.

Mistake to avoid

Do not top the Spend jar back up. They will run out in public, and it will be awkward. Topping it up removes the only consequence in the system.

Do not choose where the Give jar goes. Let them pick, even if the choice seems odd to you.

Do It Together

The 20-minute activity

The first split 20 minutes · three containers, tape, markers, and their money in coins

Label and decorate the three jars.
Agree the split out loud and write it on each jar.
Do the first split in coins, by hand — not on paper. Moving the coins is what does the maths for them.
Name the Save goal. If the answer is "I don't know", pick something together.
Set the pay day. Same day every week, on the family calendar.

Done? Tick the level. Next: telling a want from a need, in a grocery store, with a real budget.

Done with level 02?

Fills in one leaf on the Saplings map and earns The Three Jars Badge. Kept in this browser only — nothing about your child is sent anywhere.

Financial education, not advice. It describes how Canadian accounts and programs work and recommends no product, provider or investment. Dollar figures are statutory.