Connected Activities
- Costly Choices
- Digital Deal or No Deal Detective
- Need It, Want It
- To Save or Spend?
What Is It All About?
Students learn to connect everyday activities with monetary value to explore the experience of earning and spending in daily life. They will track their actions, calculate totals, and reflect on how behaviours can influence financial outcomes and decision-making. The activity builds financial literacy skills by helping students notice patterns, make connections between choices and consequences, and reflect on responsible decision-making.
Why Do It?
This activity can help students understand the real-life financial impact of everyday actions and decisions. By linking familiar experiences to earning and spending, students can develop an awareness of the value of effort, responsibility, and balance. They also build self-regulation and goal-setting skills that connect to overall wellness and responsible citizenship.
What Do We Need?
- Chart paper
- Markers
- Paper for tracking or a digital log
How Do We Do It?
- Co-create a list of Earning Activities and a list of Spending Activities with the class (e.g., Earning Activities: answering a question, volunteering to read when asked, doing a class job, helping an Elder in your community; Spending Activities: leaving a mess at your desk, borrowing materials, littering).
- Have students assign a price to each Earning and Spending activity (either $1, $2, or $3).
- As each student participates in the activities throughout the day, have them keep track of their activities to calculate their earning and spending. Have students list the activity, the amount that was either earned or spent, and their new total/budget based on what was earned and/or spent.
- At the end of the week, students can review their week and reflect on their behaviours based on the patterns they identify.
- Lead a class discussion, or have students answer in a personal journal, to reflect on the following questions:
- How does behaviour impact spending?
- How might you differentiate between wants and needs?
- What can you do differently next week?
Teachers Notes
- Extension: Grade 6 students can graph their progress (Data strand expectation: D1.3 - select from among a variety of graphs, including histograms and broken-line graphs, the type of graph best suited to represent various sets of data; display the data in the graphs with proper sources, titles, and labels, and appropriate scales; and justify their choice of graphs)
- Connect to the Financial Literacy expectations (Grades 4–6 Mathematics) by emphasizing budgeting and understanding value for money.
- Connect to the Health and Physical Education expectations (Strand A: Social-Emotional Learning Skills; Strand C: Healthy Living) by linking decision-making and consumer awareness to emotional well-being and responsible choices.
- Students can use the weekly tracking to set goals for themselves for the following week (e.g., “I am going to volunteer more often in class”, “I am going to set reminders to complete my homework”, “I am going to be more helpful to others”)
- If this activity becomes a long-term learning with students tracking activities over multiple weeks, create a journal for students to track progress, set goals, and reflect on learning.
