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Fourth Grade - Mathematics

 

Activities

Tarantula Shoes

Financial and Economic Concepts: Savings and Financial Investments

Students read a book about Ryan O'Keefe, a young man who wants a pair of basketball shoes promoted by a basketball star. They learn about spending, saving, opportunity cost, and trade-offs as they study Ryan's decisions throughout the book. Students keep a diary of expenses to track their spending and examine their savings and opportunity costs.

Complete Lesson Plan - discussion questions, worksheets, vocabulary and extension ideas.

Activity Sheet (pdf)

Music Connection

Tim's Turn to Learn

Financial and Economic Concepts: Saving and Financial Investing

Tim’s Turn to Learn – animation to view and read on the computer explaining what a budget is and the difference between wants and needs.  At the end print the tracker for students to track the money they have spend for the week.  (Math: have students total their weekly spending).

Review Questions (pdf)

At the end of the story, there is a printable spending tracker so the students can track their spending.

Spending Tracker

Music Connection

Double Your Money

Financial and Economic Concepts: Saving and Financial Investing

Begin a discussion about one million by asking students questions, such as “How much is one million?”  “Do you consider one million a large number?”  “Can you think of a number larger than one million?”

Students will choose between two options:

Option 1: one million dollars. 
Option 2: one cent on the first day, two on the second, with the amount doubling and accumulating each day for one month.

Complete Lesson Plan (pdf)

A Million or Double? (pdf)

Future Wants and Needs

Financial and Economic Concepts: Saving and Financial Investing

Saving resources causes individuals to plan for future wants and needs.

Ask students to carefully consider some future wants and needs, then determine the one that they would want to obtain first.  Have students also list the cost of the item.

Have students pretend that they are getting $5.00 allowance per week.  Ask them to figure out how long it will take them before they can have the thing they want.

In a class discussion ask students if the item is worth the amount of time needed to save the money to purchase it.  Why?

Music Connection

 

Tune in to Insurance

Financial and Economic Concepts: Insurance

Directions on student worksheet: You are the owner of Cyclone Secondhand Music and Movies, located in an area that has experienced a number of damaging tornadoes in the last ten years. It’s time to buy insurance.  You rent your space but own everything in it. The expectation of a tornado will affect the   choices you make about insurance. Think like an actuary: Think about the value of your property—costs of inventory, electronic equipment, and office supplies.

Complete Lesson Plan

Student Worksheet (pdf)

Will Saves for the Stars

Financial and Economic Concepts: Saving and Financial Investing

Will Saves for the Stars is an interactive story that explains spending and saving.  This story helps students learn how to decide what they want to spend their money on and how much they need to save each week. Teachers can show the pages on the LCD projector from the teacher computer and read out loud or have students take turns reading. 

Fun follow-up activities, worksheets and a print-and-make bank are located at the links at the end of the story.  The assessment below asks questions such as, “How much money will I need to save for the following things?” and “How long will I have to save?” 

Will Saves for the Stars Worksheet (pdf)

Music Connection

I Can Be An Entrepreneur

Financial and Economic Concepts: Entrepreneurism

Great introductory worksheets to help students begin to think about their earning power and ways they can earn money.  Have students complete both worksheets then have a discussion so they can share their ideas. 

Suggested discussion questions:

• What jobs did you choose to earn money?
• Why do you think they will be successful?

Create a graphic organizer that organizes the students' into categories -- [ie:, Enjoyable, Profitable, Consumer Demand, Parents Approve.]

Assess students completed worksheets.  Consider the student’s reasons for choosing their jobs, the likelihood that they would be successful, their neatness, grammar, spelling, accuracy of the math, etc.

Complete Lesson Plan

Earning a Profit Answer Sheet (pdf)

Jobs I Can Do to Earn Money (pdf)

Music Connection

Lemonade for Sale

Financial and Economic Concepts: Entrepreneurism

Using the book, Lemonade for Sale this lesson incorporates the economic concepts of producer, consumer, and productive resources through active exploration. Students listen to a story about children who produce and sell lemonade to raise money for their clubhouse. Then they produce a product and classify the resources used in production as natural resources, capital resources (goods), or human resources. The extension activities integrate mathematics and language arts as students graph the lemonade sales and create an advertisement for lemonade.

Students will be able to:

• Define and give examples of natural, human, and capital resources.
• Determine which productive resources (natural, human, and capital) were used in the construction of a product.
• Describe in pictures and words the concepts of consumers and producers.
• Apply the concepts of consumer and producer to a real life situation.

Complete Lesson Plan (pdf)

Used with Permission: The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond

Music Connection

Making Choices

Financial and Economic Concepts: Scarcity & Choices

This lesson teaches students the answers to question such as:  What does the word choice mean? Why do we have to make choices when we decide how to spend money? What are some things that kids spend money on?

Lesson Extension: Have students bring in and discuss examples from books, magazines, and movies where people deal with budgets and make decisions about how to spend money. What decisions were made, and why?

Expository: Writing Situation: Everyone has to make decisions when it comes to spending money. Directions for Writing: Think about a time when you had to decide how to spend money. Now explain why you made the choice that you did.

Complete Lesson Plan

Student Magazine Pages and Worksheets: Time to Choose! (pdf)

Savings

Financial and Economic Concepts: Scarcity & Choices

This lesson helps students understand saving and why it is important.  It will also help students understand interest.

Expository: Writing Situation: By setting goals, you can help to accomplish something in the future. Directions for Writing: Think about a goal that you have. Now explain why this goal is important to you and what you can do to reach it.

Narrative: Writing Situation: There are all sorts of goals that people have. Directions for Writing: Write a story about a real or imagined goal that someone has.

Complete Lesson Plan

Student Magazine Pages and Worksheets: How Money Can Grow (pdf)

Double Your Money

Financial and Economic Concepts: Savings and Financial Investments

This lesson will teach students to estimate and calculate the sum of very large numbers.  Students will also learn and understand the concept of exponential growth.

Complete Lesson Plan (pdf)

Music Connection

Great Graph!

Financial and Economic Concepts: Savings and Financial Investments

Students will compare sets of coins and determine which group is greater than, less than, or equal to the other according to the number and value of each set. Students will read and interpret a simple bar graph to answer questions.

Complete Lesson Plan (pdf)

Music Connection

The Hurricane Game

Financial and Economic Concepts: Insurance

A math lesson for elementary students using the video clip as part of a simulation model for insurance decisions on purchasing hurricane insurance.

The Hurricane Game Video

Written Description

The YouTube video clip is of an instructor guiding students though a simulation of buying hurricane insurance.  He uses monopoly props such as money and houses to explain the concept of insurance.  Based on rolling dice, students are able to see the probabilities of having their homes damaged from a hurricane.  They also learn about the costs associated with coverage. 

Teachers can use the clip to introduce the scenario, or duplicate it in their own classroom following what the instructor does on the video clip or the written description.

Stock Up on Stocks

Financial and Economic Concepts: Savings and Financial Investments

Why work for your money when you can make your money work for you, say financial experts. To do that, you first have to have money, which you can get by saving. Once you have a nest egg, you can invest that money and make it grow. Here are a few ways to make money investing.

Article on Investment Options

For some people, buying stocks is a great way to make money. For others, it's a great way to go broke! Our question and answer session shows you a few of the stock market's ups and downs.

General Information for Teachers

Student Worksheet (pdf)

Music Connection

To Market!  To Market!

Financial and Economic Concepts: Savings and Financial Investments

To Market: After reading the articles and playing the stock market game, provide an opportunity for students to apply what they have learned. Use the PDF activity To Market, To Market! (PDF) to track an imaginary stock purchase over one week. This activity invites kids to follow the stock price of one of five kid-friendly companies: Disney, Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Mattel, and Toys 'R' Us.

If students are using the Web to track stock quotes, try USA Today's site. At the top right of the page, enter the company's stock symbol. When you click on "Go," you will get a full report on the stock's recent activity. The boldfaced number on the top line (under "Last") is the current stock value. If possible, students should check the stock after the markets close at 4 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. If using a daily newspaper, show students where to find the stock quotes in the business section (you will be a day behind the markets).

On the reproducible, students track the stock for one market week; you may choose to extend the activity to demonstrate greater fluctuations in stock values.

Keep in mind that this activity involves multiplication, addition, and subtraction of decimals (monetary sums). If this is too advanced for your students, you can still introduce the idea of stock values by having students look up today's stock quote for a favorite company from the list.

Student Worksheet (pdf)

Music Connection

How to Teach Health Insurance to Kids

Financial and Economic Concepts: Insurance

How to Teach Health Insurance to Kids

Step 1 - Have the kids count the number in the group. For teaching purposes let us say it is 30. Have the kids sit together by gender. Within each gender, have the kids sit by month of birth, oldest to youngest.

Step 2 - Tell the kids that boys and girls need medical treatment at a different frequency and that age makes a difference. The older the person is, the more frequently they will probably need medical treatment.

Step 3 - Tell the kids each group no matter how big or small is called a "risk pool." They are a risk pool. Each risk pool is unique based on its size, gender makeup and age makeup.

Step 4 - Tell them that the amount that is charged for health insurance is called the "premium" and is based on the makeup of the risk pool by gender, age and "claims experience," or history of past claims.

Step 5 - Tell each student that based on their risk pool you are going to pretend that their premium is two dollars per month. That is $60.00 per month or $720.00 of premium for the year for the risk pool. If two people become ill during the year and their costs are $100.00 each, then the "health insurance company" or risk pool pays $200.00. If these are the only two people to need coverage then the company has done well. They simply carry the remaining $500.00 forward to the next year adding the next $720.00.

Step 6  - Tell the kids that the bills people turn in are called "claims" and, often, there is a "deductible" or "co-pay" amount that the person who is insured must pay towards each bill themselves to help the risk pool survive. Tell the kids the people covered in the risk pool are called "insureds."

Step 7 - Tell the kids that sometimes there are more claims than the risk pool collected in premiums. Each year part of the premiums collected have to go to a "reserve" which is used as an emergency fund. Tell the kids if, for example 5 kids from their group get ill and have claims of $200.00 or a total of $1,000.00, then the pool must pay an additional $280.00 on top of the $720.00 from reserves.

Step 8 - Teach the kids that the reserves now have to be replaced so they will be charged an additional 78 cents ($280.00 divided by 12 then 30), for a monthly premium of $2.78.

Step 9 - Summarize for the kids that health insurance is most simply a business that collects money from many people, many who won't become ill, so that the impact on those who do become ill is minimized. The company also assesses what to charge based on group age and gender makeup and claim history.