Money Matters Week
The children in the Prep greatly enjoyed developing their economc understanding during our 'Money Matters' week. They learnt about the history of money, the cost of common household products and foodstuffs, using credit or debit cards and, crucially, how to save money and earn interest!
They enjoyed participating in a range of money-related activities, including the following:
- Creating and using a school currency, called Scallops, to ‘earn’ and ‘spend’ or ‘pay’ as with house points
- Keeping an Account (showing Credit and Debit), trading 20 tokens/scallops for a note and ten notes for a card
- Placing ‘bids’ in an auction of different items every day – guessing the value of the item shown, paying a scallop to enter and win a prize if closest in value
- Saving scallops in order to accumulate ‘wealth’ and win a prize for making the most money in the class
- Paying a scallop to enter a ‘problem of the day’ competition in order to win a prize
- Earning scallops by helping someone, being kind, getting work done and being smartly dressed
A number of parents came along to see what the children were discovering and they too enjoyed a range of money-related exercises, including catalogue shopping with Prep 5 children and testing the properties of metals used to make coins with Prep 6.
The week can be best summed up by quoting some of the Prep children, who described it as 'cool', 'brilliant - can we keep on earning scallops'? and 'the best fun I've had in ages'.
Jan Owen, Head of Prep
