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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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Showing 30 matches out of 136 activities

Showing 30 matches out of 136 activities

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  • Calculating the numbers in your paycheck

    Updated

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

    Students review a pay stub from a sample paycheck to understand the real-world effect of taxes and deductions on the amount of money they receive.

    Key information

    Topic:
    Earn (Getting paid, Making money, Paying taxes)
    Activity duration:
    45-60 minutes
    Available in Spanish

    Building block

    • Financial knowledge and decision-making skills

  • Meeting your future self

    Updated

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

    Students imagine their lives in 10 years and write a fill-in-the-blank letter from their future selves to their current selves.

    Key information

    Topic:
    Earn (Learning about careers, Making money), Save and invest (Saving for long-term goals)
    Activity duration:
    45-60 minutes
    Available in Spanish

    Building block

    • Executive function
    • Financial habits and norms

  • Understanding jobs, teens, and taxes

    Updated

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

    Students read a handout about taxes and respond to questions to explore the relationship between working and taxes.

    Key information

    Topic:
    Earn (Becoming an entrepreneur, Getting paid, Making money, Paying taxes)
    Activity duration:
    15-20 minutes

    Building block

    • Financial knowledge and decision-making skills

  • Understanding taxes and your paycheck

    Updated

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

    Students analyze statements about taxes to better understand how taxes affect people’s paychecks.

    Key information

    Topic:
    Earn (Getting paid, Making money, Paying taxes)
    Activity duration:
    45-60 minutes

    Building block

    • 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 (Becoming an entrepreneur, Learning about careers, Making money)
    Activity duration:
    75-90 minutes

    Building block

    • Executive function
    • Financial habits and norms

  • 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 (Becoming an entrepreneur, Learning about careers, Making money)
    Activity duration:
    75-90 minutes

    Building block

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

  • 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 (Becoming an entrepreneur, Learning about careers, Making money), Spend (Buying things)
    Activity duration:
    75-90 minutes

    Building block

    • Executive function
    • Financial knowledge and decision-making skills

  • Playing a business game

    Updated

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

    Students read a book about starting a business and then play a game to explore things that can happen when you run a business.

    Key information

    Topic:
    Earn (Becoming an entrepreneur, Learning about careers, Making money)
    Activity duration:
    45-60 minutes

    Building block

    • Financial knowledge and decision-making skills

  • Researching the gig economy

    Updated

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

    Students conduct research about the gig economy, identify benefits and drawbacks to gig work, and reflect on whether gig work would be right for them.

    Key information

    Topic:
    Earn (Learning about careers, Making money)
    Activity duration:
    45-60 minutes

    Building block

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

  • Playing a saving and spending game

    Updated

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

    Students discuss the importance of emergency savings and play a game to explore connections between saving, spending, and unexpected expenses.

    Key information

    Topic:
    Earn (Making money), Save and invest (Building emergency savings), Spend (Budgeting, Buying things)
    Activity duration:
    45-60 minutes

    Building block

    • 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.