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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.

We are updating the activities to match the new National Standards for Personal Financial Education. The standards in the activity PDF files may not match the website until these updates are complete.

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270 activities

270 activities

  • Evaluating savings scenarios

    Updated

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

    By analyzing real-world scenarios, students practice making informed decisions about savings tools to meet financial situations and needs.

    Key information

    Topic:
    Save and invest (Banking options, Choosing how to save)
    Activity duration:
    75-90 minutes

    Building block

    • Financial knowledge and decision-making skills

  • Setting a SMART savings goal

    Updated

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

    Students discuss short-term and long-term goals and what makes a goal SMART. They then create their own short-term savings goal and make an action plan to meet that goal.

    Key information

    Topic:
    Save and invest (Saving for long-term goals, Saving for short-term goals)
    Activity duration:
    45-60 minutes

    Building block

    • Financial habits and norms

  • Storing my savings

    Updated

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

    Students read descriptions of common places to store their money and weigh the benefits and risks of each to decide which one(s) fit their financial goals.

    Key information

    Topic:
    Save and invest (Banking options, Choosing how to save, Investing)
    Activity duration:
    75-90 minutes

    Building block

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

  • Banking basics card game

    Updated

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

    Students play a game to learn about common banking products and services and to consider which ones they might use now and in the future.

    Key information

    Topic:
    Save and invest (Banking options, Choosing how to save), Spend (Buying things, Paying bills), Borrow (Getting loans)
    Activity duration:
    45-60 minutes

    Building block

    • Executive function
    • Financial knowledge and decision-making skills

  • Coloring your savings

    Updated

    Ideal for: Elementary school (K-1)

    Students color pictures of dollar bills to show how much they’d need to save to buy different items.

    Key information

    Topic:
    Save and invest (Saving for short-term goals), Spend (Buying things)
    Activity duration:
    15-20 minutes

    Building block

    • Financial habits and norms
Activities align with the My Money Five principles introduced by the statutorily created federal Financial Literacy and Education Commission.