The Kingdom Code ~ Money Management God's Way {Product Review}

My oldest son is thirteen and VERY conscious of the benefit that having his own money provides. We have provided him with some one-on-one lessons, but sometimes we wished there was something more organized that he could work through to increase his money management skills. When we were given the chance to review The Complete Starter Set from The Kingdom Code, I hoped that it would provide an excellent financial responsibility course. 

About the Product

The Kingdom Code teaches children how to make and manage money through Godly principles. Designed for students in grades 4-6, it works perfectly for homeschool families, Co-ops, Private Schools, and church groups. The Complete Starter Kit includes the Textbook, Student Packet, and Teacher’s Guide. These three components are everything needed to teach one student The Kingdom Code curriculum, and the Teacher’s Guide gives the teacher what he or she needs to help make learning about money management more fun.
The basis of The Kingdom Code is to inspire & equip kid entrepreneurs to live by a code. In just 27 lessons they learn to build a business, manage money successfully and develop valuable life skills. The full-color, 244-page, spiral-bound book incorporates many areas together like economics, budgeting, Texas history, historical entrepreneurship, consumer math, and more! The program encourages practical thinking and life skills. The product has a medieval theme and incorporates many codes of a knighthood including bravery, kindness, perseverance, honor, and integrity.
If your student is too young for The Kingdom Code program, there is the option of using the JR KCK Budget Kit and the TKC Coloring Book to start teaching basic money management skills. The JR KCK Budget Kit includes information about the "JOEYS" budgeting system allowing your younger child to learn the skills at an early age. The coloring book has badges for the JOEYS system as well as some medieval themed pages with sayings or verses.
Let's take a look closer at the parts of the starter kit to get an idea of what it contains...
The Student Textbook (Non-consumable)
This is where the lesson information is. All of the assignments are based around the lessons in this book. The vocabulary terms are here, the process for building a new business, customer service skills, business plans...this is where your child will learn all they need to know to successfully complete the course. 

The Teacher's Guide (non-consumable) This is where the teacher can see the actual lesson plans for everything including how to fit the worksheets, and a plethora of other forms into the lessons. There is information for additional activities, games, and places for you to take notes about the lesson. 

The Student's Packet (consumable--need 1 per student)
This is the collection of consumable items necessary for completing the course. This includes the worksheets for each lesson, the additional forms, and paperwork that go with the lesson, the receipt book, the binder inserts, and sticker pages, and more. Most of the documents will get put into a binder as noted by the Teacher's Guide. These documents are filled out as the student goes along through the course.

The Kingdom Code is an elective designed as a 34-week course, (a full year) and ideally to be taught twice weekly for 45 minutes. It is Biblically based and has Bible verses in every lesson.
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We reviewed this product with my 13year old son. 

Our Thoughts on the Product

I started by simply setting up his student binder with the materials from his student packet. I also put my Teacher's Guide into a binder of its own. All materials like this are 3-hole-punched already.

One of the things I noticed immediately is that this course is clearly written more for the group setting. Everything is written in group terms. One of the primary things I had to do was sort through the group work to find the actual individual things. Because the material was group oriented, it was actually easy to sort through and pick out what we could actually do. I used the teacher's guide as a lesson plan. We didn’t have to do everything for each lesson--because we simply weren’t a group and because my son already had a job. So we just focused on the new vocabulary and the economic lessons more than anything else. This allowed us to skip ahead and we jumped to Lessons 8-11 to deal with the actual job and finance portion.
Every lesson I had him still read the lesson work and complete the accompanying worksheet. Most of the worksheet merely reviewed the lesson information, so it was useful.  Additionally, there was usually another corm from his student packet binder to complete to coordinate with the lesson. Information regarding it was always included in the teacher's guide.

Some of the forms we didn't even bother with--like the notices for setting up a new job, or the mentor forms. Those are really only for kids who haven't picked a job yet AND are part of a group setting working through this, not independent work.
For now, we are keeping the flashcards attached. I have him point to different terms and tell me what they mean every now and then just to keep him up on the vocabulary.

Every lesson has bonus work lessons which may or may not be directly tied to the money management aspect. One of these was to paint a rock to symbolize something about God's love for you. My oldest hates doing this kind of thing so just painted a rock green and left it at that. But my youngest and I had fun painting rocks.

So--what job did we go after? Well, it was an easy decision since my son already HAS his own job. My son’s job is lawn work. He gets paid by our neighbor to mow her grass and do all her weed-eating. He does it every other week. Living in the country, it just can’t be larger than that unless he does the work for other friends/family. It’s just frankly impossible. LOL.

Checking the Oil on the Lawnmower before use

A few of the things we added in from the program was the use of receipts. He LOVED having his own receipt book and tears out two blank ones (with the carbon copy) to keep in his wallet, so he always has one on hand to write if he does work. I also had him work on designing his logo for future business cards.

The biggest change for him, however, was the budgeting. Before the program, we had him separate two tithes (10% ea) and then he was able to keep the rest, making it 80% for him and 20% set aside for God’s ministry and the annual holy days we keep. He really did NOT like changing that up to match the JOEYS system. We tweaked it a little—We did Jesus 20% (to maintain what he already did prior to Kingdom Code), Others 5%,  Education 10%, Savings 15%, and You 50% (down from 60%). We explained the benefit of saving for education and savings as set amounts, and while he didn’t like it at first, he sees why it is beneficial. The separating portion of the budgeting technically isn't supposed to happen until the very last lesson, but I wanted him to go ahead and learn how to calculate it all out.

sorting his income into the JOEYS bags in the budget binder

Now, unlike the program, we allowed him to keep his YOU money in his bank jar after separating it out. He already has set amounts he’s allowed to spend anyways, so I really didn’t see the need to make him WAIT to use it. We already have that set up in his spending rules as it is. My youngest snagged the JOEYS pages from the JR TKC Budget Kit for his own use. :)
So, what things did we focus on, from the lessons themselves?
1. Being Financially Responsible This was a great lesson for him from lesson #1. He already recognized that you have to pay all your debts, but I appreciated its emphasis on paying back debts quickly. 
2. Keeping your Word I appreciated the emphasis on keeping your word. The program reminds the student that if they say they will do something, they MUST do what they say. This is excellent for any one child to learn.
3. Focus on Preparation He tends to jump in before really planning things out. This made him slow down a bit and take time to figure stuff out. He didn’t like slowing down, but he saw the benefit eventually.
4. Learning about the benefit of Capitalism Because we also were learning about communism in history, learning about what capitalism entails was also very beneficial. We talked about supply and demand and used present-day news about the Midwest farming crisis to extrapolate the effects it will present on supply and demand in the future. 
5. Takes Money more seriously Having to really calculate how much he makes per hour made him appreciate his income more. It makes it easier to talk about expenses—“Is that _____ worth doing your job for two weeks?” Making his time = money.
6. Learned how to count back change. I don't even NEED to go into how important this skill is. LOL. Seriously, gaining this skill was and is incredibly important to me! I was about my son's age when I too was taught that skill.
All in all, the things we will continue to do are using the receipts and ledger. He likes visually seeing his income and expenses. We also will probably continue some of the budgeting. We obviously will continue our Jesus=20% since we did that already, but I will tweak the others and make it simply setting aside another 20% for Savings. I really like having a set amount for him to automatically put into his savings account in the bank. 
Unfortunately, at this time he can’t add any other customers. We just don’t have any other neighbors, and I can’t haul his big John Deere lawnmower in my car. LOL. The only thing he may be able to do is to offer himself as a worker to people who need gravel or mulch spread. Or if they just need weed eating. But everyone lives so far away, AND he doesn’t own a phone, thus it would be hard to coordinate that. 
I think this product will work best for students who live in actual neighborhoods where they have more opportunities for actual jobs. I also think it works BEST for a group. I also think the teacher guide is fairly confusing to use for one student. I also don’t think this program is a good fit for someone who already has a job because so much of it is PRE-job networking and such. Things they’ve already done. I think this product DOES have some great principles about money management, but I just feel like it’s WAY bigger in scope than most kids can do. When I agreed to do it, I thought they just have to come up with a PRETEND job—I didn’t realize it was to have a legitimate job! LOL. 
I did really appreciate all the tie-ins to God’s word heavily through every lesson. That was a great asset to the course. 
So, would I ever purchase this product to use for my own family? No. I just don't see it as being something we would use outside of this review. Would it be ideal for a child just itching to start their own business? Absolutely! Also perfect for a class wanting to teach money management. Just not so much for the individual student--especially if they live in the country and away from resources.

Want to Know More

We've reviewed The Complete Starter Set from The Kingdom Code. Please visit other reviewers to learn more about what their family did--and what jobs they explored while using the product!

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USE THE CODE 10TKC30 TO TAKE 10% OFF 
ALL THE KINGDOM CODE ONLINE PRODUCTS!!