The word keiki is Hawaiian for "baby" or "child", literally "the little one".
Parents learn with kids. A little saying I came up with while watching our kids in the library is, "A busy mind gives peaceful times". My own observation watching our own little ones is that their minds are constantly working. Kids are always looking for new ways to keep busy. Since my son loves science books, I started relating different fundamentals he'd find interesting. "Dad, what happened to dinosaurs when they died?"
Somehow, with a 7 year old kid, we talked about fossils with a basic discussion of energy, gas, oil for cars and the iron man suit where I ended up Googling websites to explain. Admittedly, I ended up learning a lot too. I remember years back thinking the commodity futures markets and options were way too difficult to spend time learning. When you need to research and break down info in a way explaining to a 7 year old can understand, it's amazing how much you learn yourself. The reason is because their attention is on you as a parent for guidance.
A great way to get started is by looking at some of the industry websites where there's lots of great info to pull from. I've noticed my kids love to quote facts out of science journals to test how much their parents know. For example, Iowa Corn Growers Association's website has coloring pictures for kids and fun facts like, "How many kernels on an average ear of corn?". As we grow older, we lose our sense of fascination of the simplest things. Spending a little time teaching our kids I found is a great way to rekindle our own interests and exploration. What I love about the markets is both the dynamic flow of information that changes everyday and the universe of things to learn that spans beyond my lifetime.
Aside from fundamental "where does oil come from and how is it used" type knowledge, the simple math problems helped our kids in their own school work. Below, we covered decimals and fractions for corn with word problems to gain an understanding of a bigger picture.
On CME Group's website, there's futures fundamentals where you can access the link simply by scrolling to the footer of our website under Learning Resources. Kids can even download a fun iPhone app called Risk Ranch they get engrossed in.
So, taking time to teach while learning yourself can be very helpful both for the recipient as well as the person teaching. Our Learning Resources website has a lot of great information and links to other sites which can be a nice start.
Take a look at interactive classes, software and training on the Resources section of our site.