My Kids Bank

This year I wanted to try something new with my students. Over the summer I was part of a book chat and we were reading Teach Like Your Hair's On Fire by Rafe Esquith. One of the things that he wrote about was teaching students about financial literacy, and I got inspired since it's also part of the 8th grade curriculum. Like so many others before me I decided that I was going to go above and beyond and teach my students about rent, bills, income, and budgeting. 

My Plan:

1. Have students earn income by turning in assignments and being on time to class
2. Charge students rent for their desks
3. Fine students for eating, swearing, littering and writing on desks
4. Have a class store where I provide chips, drinks and other things for students to spend money on
5. I would print money to pay my students with, which means that I have to buy paper and ink, which means that I would have to spend money to make fake money, and expect students to keep up with it all and realizing this made me want to quit teaching and school hadn't even started yet.

Obviously if I was going to implement my plan I wasn't going to spend all my money on colored paper. I decided to search online to see if there was an online banking solution, and to my relief there is! 

What I like:

• You can have individual accounts for your students
• You, as the banker, can make deposits and withdrawals from each account
• There is a setting for earning interest
• You can edit multiple accounts at one time
• You can print bank statements for each account