To help them along, a handful of mutual funds have been created just for kids. It teaches juniors about investing while showing them how it's done with real money. A couple other, newer funds for children have front loads or high fees and not a long track record, so I would be more skeptical of those. Stein Roe started the fund in 1994 after conducting a study of kids and investing. What makes the fund unusual is its education efforts.
Every investor receives a welcome kit with activity book.
The fund's Web site has educational games for children and references for parents. The quarterly Dollar Digest newsletter includes understandable profiles of companies held by the fund. A popular feature is each issue's interview with a chief executive using questions from young shareholders. We go over the newsletter and talk about why that's significant information. The idea is that when hard cash is involved, kids are a lot more interested in these investment lessons.