As of Monday, we've started giving our almost 3 1/2-year old son, Snuggle Bug, a small allowance.  He's been getting a quarter per day.  To earn it, he has to help pick up the toys in the living room and his bedroom each night before bed (this takes about 15 minutes).  

He has very little concept of the value of money but he's already learning.  To him, money means he can buy candy (every so often we let him put a quarter in the gum ball machine at the local pizza joint down the street) or small toys.

These past few nights, he's been very cooperative in his chores and eager to get his quarter after picking up toys.  He then goes and puts it in his piggy bank (it's already pretty full with the loose change that Oronzo and I have been adding to it for quite some time, he's just now aware of the piggy bank).  

Yesterday, when he was supposed to be napping, he decided to get into his piggy bank (it has a little plug at the bottom to shake out the change) and he crammed all of his change into his pockets.  It was spilling out onto the floor and that's what alerted us to the fact that he wasn't actually napping.  I couldn't help but laugh when I saw him standing there, with his pockets bulging with coins. :)

If we continue on with a regular allowance, I'm considering getting three jars, labeling them "save", "spend", and "give" and teaching him to evenly portion out his allowance into those three jars and teaching him what those terms mean.  He's a bit young to teach him about a bank savings account, but he can physically see what saving money means.  We can let him spend some of his money purchasing small toys at Target or other stores.  We can have him donate a portion of his money in the collection basket at church.

Can you tell we're winging it here?  We're not really sure what we're doing yet.