Ryan Hammill
Learning how to handle money is one of the most important skills you need to learn, and it’s a great way to get an introduction to business and economics as well. Learning about finance and budgeting can help you to have more financial freedom when you’re older. You can play games and do activities by yourself or with a friend to test your knowledge and teach you about the economy. Have fun with these games and activities while you learn and you might even be inspired to start your own business one day!
Business
You don’t have to start your own business to learn about the skills and approaches involved in building a business. There’s a lot to learn about responsibility, money management, creating something from scratch, and marketing it to people that you can use in your everyday life.
- Lesson Plan: Building and Growing a Business: Follow along with this lesson plan for grades 4-6 to learn how to create and build a business.
- Getting Down to Business WebQuest: In this activity, you imagine that you have $500 and need to work with friends to start a business.
- Jay Starts a Business: Watch this visual story to learn about starting a business.
- Ice Cream Truck Game: Practice balancing your expenses, pricing, and customer demand to earn enough money to travel from city to city.
- Supply, Demand, Production Cost, and Pricing: Read these questions and answers to learn about supply and demand and how they affect how much a business can charge for its products.
- Dollar a Glass Game: Play this game about a virtual lemonade stand to practice buying supplies, setting prices, and making money.
- Town Manager for a Day: This activity asks you to look at how to manage local taxes and avoid cutting services in a fictional town.
- Famous Entrepreneur Scavenger Hunt: Find interesting facts about famous entrepreneurs.
- Getting Started in Business: Read about the steps that you need to go through to start and run a business.
- Building Rush: Play a game where the goal is to make as much money as possible before time runs out.
- Virtonomics: Business Simulation Game: Do you have what it takes to grow your company into a big business empire?
- Business Glossary for Kids: Learn some of the words people use to talk about money and business here.
Finance and Money
Learning about money is a necessary skill because you need money for everything you need to live, like food, clothes, and a home. It’s important to understand how to create a budget, what credit is, and how to use money in general so when you start getting paid, you know how to save and spend it carefully.
- How to Write a Check: This worksheet can help you understand what the parts of a check are and how to write one out.
- How to Avoid Credit Card Dependence: Credit cards can be a great tool, but they can also hurt you if you don’t use them wisely.
- How Banks Work: Read this helpful overview of how banks work and the different kinds of accounts you can have.
- Live “Stock” Adventure Activity Guide: Print out this classroom activity to learn how stocks work using a deck of cards.
- Planning Your Spending: Fill in this worksheet to practice planning how to spend money.
- Equivalent Amounts of Money Game: Practice using different groups of coins to make up the same amounts.
- Money Bingo: Practice counting money and guess all of the amounts correctly to hit Bingo!
- Giving Vicki Credit: Follow along with this visual story to learn more about credit and borrowing money.
- Money Mammals: Money Storm Game: All of Joe’s money has been blown away in a storm! Grab it and drag it into the jar to fill it to the right amount.
- The Seven Denominations: Learn about the history and designs of all seven different types of paper money being issued today.
- Jump$tart’s Reality Check: Try this activity to find out how much your dream life after graduation will cost.
- Finances for Kids: Watch videos featuring Elmo and read more about financial literacy here.
- SPENT: Imagine you only have $1,000 to support you and your child. Could you make it through a month?
Economics
Economics is the study of how people make, sell, and use goods and resources, and it goes hand in hand with business and finance. Learning about the basics of economics can teach you a lot about not only saving money and starting a business but also the world around you and how it works.
- Kiddynomics: These economics lesson plans can help young children learn about economics concepts.
- A Basket of Bangles: Business and Banking Lesson Plan: Learn about how banks work and how they can help businesses with this lesson.
- Books for Teaching Economic Concepts: Read the books on this list to learn more about economics.
- The Classroom Mini-Economy: Creating a mini-economy in your classroom can help you to understand more about economics.
- Explaining Taxes to Kids: Taxes aren’t fun, but they’re important because they help pay for things that help everyone.
- The Stock Market Game: Play this game to learn how the stock market works.
- Living Economics: Household Formation: Who people live with can change a lot depending on the health of the economy.
- Economics WebQuest: Tour Econo-Town and learn about supply and demand, budgeting, and managing resources.
- Building Wealth: What is wealth, how can you achieve it, and how should you set financial goals?
- How Money Is Made: The Bureau of Engraving and Printing has a page that shows pictures and details about how U.S. money is made.
- WebQuest: Look Who’s Footing the Bill! This WebQuest teaches about our government and the national debt.
