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Find financial literacy activities

Find activities that can help you teach and nurture the building blocks of financial capability across the curriculum.

These classroom activities can be completed within a single class period. Each activity comes with a teacher guide and supporting student material, so it’s easy to implement whether you’re an experienced personal finance teacher, integrating financial literacy into another subject area, or supplementing your existing financial education curriculum.

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268 activities

268 activities

  • Drawing your own business comic strip

    Updated

    Ideal for: Elementary school (4-5), Middle school (6-8)

    Students explore entrepreneurship by reading a story about entrepreneurs and drawing a comic strip about starting a business.

    Key information

    Topic:
    Earn (Learning about careers, Making money)
    Activity duration:
    75-90 minutes

    Building block

    • Financial habits and norms
    • Financial knowledge and decision-making skills

  • Exploring entrepreneurship

    Updated

    Ideal for: Elementary school (4-5), Middle school (6-8)

    Students read a book about starting a business, think of an idea for a product they can create or improve, and design a plan for selling it.

    Key information

    Topic:
    Earn (Learning about careers, Making money)
    Activity duration:
    75-90 minutes

    Building block

    • Executive function
    • Financial habits and norms

  • Exploring opportunity costs

    Updated

    Ideal for: Elementary school (4-5), Middle school (6-8)

    Students read a book about the opportunity costs of starting a business, play a fill-in-the-blank game, and discuss things they could give up so they can have something else.

    Key information

    Topic:
    Earn (Learning about careers, Making money), Spend (Buying things)
    Activity duration:
    75-90 minutes

    Building block

    • Executive function
    • Financial habits and norms
    • Financial knowledge and decision-making skills

  • Exploring saving and spending game

    Updated

    Ideal for: Elementary school (2-3), Elementary school (4-5)

    Students play a game where they earn and spend money to learn how our choices affect how we’re able to save.

    Key information

    Topic:
    Earn (Making money), Save and invest (Choosing how to save), Protect (Managing risk), Spend (Buying things), Borrow (Getting loans)
    Activity duration:
    45-60 minutes

    Building block

    • Executive function
    • Financial habits and norms
    • Financial knowledge and decision-making skills

  • Including giving in your budget

    Updated

    Ideal for: High school (9-10), High school (11-12)

    Students explore how creating a budgeting rule can help people include giving in their monthly budgets.

    Key information

    Topic:
    Spend (Budgeting, Giving to others)
    Activity duration:
    45-60 minutes

    Building block

    • Executive function
    • Financial habits and norms
    • Financial knowledge and decision-making skills
Activities align with the My Money Five principles introduced by the statutorily created federal Financial Literacy and Education Commission.