If youโre anything like me, you know that teaching real-life skills is just as important as teaching sight words and subtraction. And one of the best life skills we can give our students? Financial literacy! Yesโeven our little learners can start to understand saving, spending, earning, and making smart choices with money. Let’s work to create a variety of activities for financial literacy for elementary students. In this blog post, let’s chat about financial literacy vocabulary, interactive read alouds that are great to integrate, creating a class economy system, partner games to centers, and more.โ
Before students can talk about money, they need to know the words! Begin by introducing key terms like income, save, spend, needs, wants, and more.
Use these kid-friendly vocabulary cards, simple definitions, and real-world examples to help students connect these new words to things they actually do and see every day. Have students create their own vocabulary book, too!
Teacher Tip: Use the vocabulary cards to build a “Money Words” wall in your classroom. Refer back to it often during the time of learning about financial literacy for elementary students!
Letโs be honestโour students LOVE games! Make learning fun with partner games and puzzles that help reinforce financial literacy concepts in a fun, interactive way.
Games like this help students practice decision-making, teamwork, and applying the vocabulary theyโve been learning. And bonus: they donโt even realize how much theyโre learning because theyโre having so much fun learning about financial literacy for elementary students!
Books are one of my favorite ways to sneak in big concepts in a gentle, approachable way. I talk a lot about the power of read alouds HERE. I loved grabbing my little mathematicians attention with a read aloud. Here are a few that go perfectly with financial literacy themes. Theyโll get your students talking, thinking, and connecting with the ideas.
Here are a few favorites:
You can use these books to introduce vocabulary, model comprehension skills, or kick off deeper conversations. They also make a great anchor for a writing activity in your writing station!
This is where things get really fun! Put all of that financial literacy for elementary students learning into action! Create a simple class economy system that teaches students about earning, saving, and spending.
Hereโs how it works:
Itโs a great way to build classroom community and give students real-world practice managing their โmoney.โ
Teacher Tip: Add in a weekly โbanking dayโ where students can count their cash, save up for something big, or reflect on their spending habits!
Along with vocabulary, partner games, a classroom economy, read alouds, there are more activities that lend themselves to financial literacy for elementary students. Think pocket book sorts, cut and paste activities, writing prompts, and graphic organizers that help students think through money choices.
Thereโs also an interactive notebook option, where students track their class economy progress, reflect on their goals, and respond to scenarios. It’s a great way to tie everything together and see how your students are growing in their understanding of financial literacy for elementary students.
This financial literacy for elementary students unit hasย everythingย you need to make teaching money skills easy and fun. Itโs perfect for first grade (and can be adapted for K or 2nd too!), and itโs designed to save you time while giving your students real-world learning opportunities.
When you grab the unit, youโll get:
If youโve ever wished for a meaningful financial literacy for elementary students teaching unit that doesnโt feel like a ton of extra workโฆ this is it.
ย Click here to grab the Personal Financial Literacy for Elementary Students Unit on TpT!
I’m a K-1 teacher who is passionate about making lessons your studentsย loveย and that areย easy to implementย for teachers.ย ย Helping teachers like you navigate their way through their literacy block brings me great joy. I am a lifelong learner who loves staying on top of current literacy learning and practices. Here, youโll find the tools you need to move your K-2 students forward!
