Fun Friday: Financial Literacy

Our Fun Friday program was (of course!) a lot of FUN! Last week we focused on financial literacy – important information that even young kids should start discussing with their adults.  In Pennsylvania, the state library has created 5 literacies they have labeled as PA Forward. These initiatives are to help us use similar vocabulary when asking for volunteers and donations for programming.

Financial Literacy

For Money Week, I created a Fun Friday program centered around financial literacy (or as I told the kids – MONEY!).  This program is for 1st – 4th graders. So, I first went over each of the coins to make sure kids knew what they were called. And what the similarities and differences were. 

Then we talked for a few minutes about the difference between things we want and things we need.  The kids had a pretty strong grasp of the difference and gave some great examples of each, although I did have a couple of boys tell me they need to have video games or they could never survive!

After our discussion, I read David A. Adler’s book Money Madness, which fits perfectly with our theme – I will caution you, it’s a little long and some parts are in depth, so I skimmed over some of it while talking more about other parts. 

Money Bingo

And then came the really fun part – money bingo!  The kids all had game boards with pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, and dollar bills printed on them.  It’s so funny how involved the kids get into such a simple game, but every time a new space was called a mixture of cheers and groans could be heard from the 22 kids who showed up on Friday.  This was a great program to introduce kids to money, where it came from, and what came before it.  Tonight’s program is financial literacy for the middle school age group, so we’ll see what happens!