You can use chocolate candies today to raise kids who earn more money.

Use chocolate candies to teach math today and raise your kids to be rich tomorrow. Because kids with reading and math scores at age 7 are likely to earn more money in adulthood, according to research from the University of Edinburgh. 

“Children who have acquired more skill in reading at age 7 have a cascade of positive events,” says Timothy Bates, a University of Edinburgh psychology professor, “and by adulthood are earning significantly more.” 

Bates found an increase in one level of reading at age 7 translated into an $8,000 increase in yearly earnings by age 45. In fact, of his 17,000 young subjects, the good readers not only had higher incomes but better housing than the kids who had perhaps higher IQs or richer parents, but read or performed math at lower levels. 

So here, find fun and free ways to introduce these skills.

1) Make homemade picture frames. This involves measuring – look for some key words here – the length, the width, and finally calculating the perimeter. You got inches, feet, and numbers to work with.

2) Read to them. Big books, little books, but not only story books. Non fiction books about space, dinosaurs, money and even food will introduce the kind of vocabulary words that help reading scores later.

3) Bake. You’ll be cutting sticks of butter into thirds, filling 1/2 cups, breaking two eggs, doubling recipes and therefore those fractions.

4) Shop. Pay in cash and demonstrate that four quarters make a dollar, two five-dollar bills are the same as one ten-dollar bill. Set a budget and then subtract from it every time you put an item in your cart.

5) Eat chocolate candies. Remember, some things need to be memorized and while multiplication is one of them, you can introduce the concept by dividing candies or pretzels into four groups of five, which equal 20.