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Junior Financial Literacy Activities for Kids
Learn Financial Literacy with these Money Games
Now play a game to find out what kind of financial risk-taker you are.
(Leverage the video above to help your planning.)
Activity Details
Time needed: 20–30 minutes
Materials needed:
- Pennies (play coins or real pennies), five for each Junior and enough pennies for the banker to “pay out” investments, depending on the size of your group. You can also use objects to replace pennies, such as marbles.
- Paper
- Pens
Setup:
Part of financial literacy is learning about the difference between saving and investing. Saving is putting money aside to reach your goals. Investing is putting money into something so that the money’s value will grow over time. Investing also involves risk. In this financial literacy activity, kids will play a money game to learn about investing and financial risk.
Activity:
Volunteer acts as the banker and gives each Junior “investor” five pennies.
- On two separate slips of paper, write the number 1.
- On two separate slips of paper, write the number 2
- On one separate slip of paper, write the word “zero.”
- Fold them
Ask Juniors (4th and 5th graders) to each place one or more pennies in front of them as their investment. Make sure they know that they keep pennies aside and can decide how many they want to invest. Remind them there might be a chance to gain more pennies or lose all their investment.
For each round, pick and read one slip of paper. (Make sure to put it aside and don’t add it back in with the unselected papers.)
If it’s the number “one,” you’d give one penny to each Junior that invested.
If it’s “two,” you’d double their investment of whatever number of pennies they invested.
If it’s “zero,” everyone loses their investment and gives their penny or pennies to the bank.
Let Juniors know that with each round, they can invest more pennies if they want, or save and set aside whatever pennies they want. Or they can choose not to invest at all.
Play until there are no more papers.
