I know, it’s another online game and we all are trying to keep our children away from TV and computers.  I was against it for a long time, but the kids had their winter holidays and I let them play. Then I started to play just to see what it is all about. And I found out, that if you include some learning, you and your child can actually benefit from the game.

For all of you who are not familiar with the game – it’s a Facebook application and the idea of the game is to grow your farm. You earn money and points (XP) by harvesting (and selling) your produce (milk, eggs, vegetables, fruits..). You can then buy seeds, trees, animals or decoration and buildings. As you progress you get rewards and neighbors, which help you by fertilizing your field and feeding the chicken, and you help them in return.

I must admit it is adictive and time consuming, but let me explain first, what valuable money lessons your child can learn from it.

First of all, you have to earn the money to spend it. You must think of the ways, how you are going to do that. Is it better to buy seeds, animals, trees? They all grow at different speed (taking different amount of time), so you have to plan your time as well – will you be able to harvest your crops, before they are whitered? You have to wait until you can harvest, which I believe is a strong component of the game. Our children are all too often in the NOW mode:).

Then you have all kinds of buildings and decorations, which are great, but they cost quite a lot of money (coins) and you have to save for them. How will you do that? In order to upgrade the farm (beside having enough neighbors) you have to think of paying for the upgrade (which is expensive) and still have some money for planting the seeds.

You can even buy tractor and seeder and harvester, but they require fuel. Some of it you get while playing, but it is far from enough, if you have large farm. You again have to decide if you want to buy the fuel or plant the seeds manually (that is by clicking a lot more).

You see, it is all about budgeting – the child have to decide what he will buy.  And when he will buy. Will he save the money or spend it? Is spending really a spending or is it investment?  You can even explain to him the term return on investment – you don’t earn all the money that you sell for, you have to pay for the plowing and the seeds, and only the difference is actually your income. When you include the time factor, the returns that look great (that is sell for more) doesn’t always get you more.

Here is an example (the plowing cost is 15 for both, so we will ignore that): you buy strawberries for 10 and sell them for 35. Your net profit would be 25. When you buy peppers for 70 and sell them for 162, you profit is  92. At first glance, the peppers are better, but… you can harvest strawberries in 4 hours and peppers in 1 day, so you can plant strawberries 6 times in a day, which increases your net profit to 150 (a day).

As I said the game is adicitve and time consuming (if you let it be), but again, you can make an agreement with your child, that he plays only on certain days (and therefore he has to choose the seeds that takes the required time and again, he is learning) or for certain amount of time. Around 15 minutes are just enough to harvest your farm and plant the seeds. It can take time to help friends and to send the gifts, which are not essential for the game, although you get points and rewards for that, but you can negotiate with the child to limit this to certain days.

We all play the game at home, at the evenings, competing with one another, and at the same time helping each other, sending gifts and fertilizing each other farm. We made a plan, so the kids can play after dinner for half an hour every other day on the workdays, and on Friday or Saturday they can catch up and play longer. Provided they have done all the homework and home work (errands).