Classroom Mini Economy

This past year I worked at a pretty amazing school where they had a school wide mini economy that everyone participated in. The fifth graders, who were in charge of all of the product selling, sold items to all of the younger grades once a month.

Once a month we'd go to the cafeteria where the fifth graders had their stores set up, had their mini economy money in hand, their business license clearly placed, and their negotiating techniques practiced and ready to implement to anyone who walked past their stores. It was great! I loved every single time we went because there was always something new. There was always someone trying to out do their competitor; which was a great way to show how companies advertise to the masses and how they get their products into the hand of consumers over the other products.

The year before teaching at this school, I taught in another classroom that had some pretty severe behavioral issues. I racked my brain on how to tame them because it was a constant battle of wills, would it be me or the children running the class?

This is when my mini economy was born...I belong to quite a few teacher sites because I love collaboration. I wrote a little blurb about the issues I was having and got a response that changed my whole outlook on how I could run my classroom. The post led me to a variety of resources about starting a mini economy in my classroom. I purchased quite a few things to get this started because the school and the classroom I was in was not really financially able to help at the time. I was in the middle of a maternity leave and well, they don't exactly hand out money to someone who is just "filling in." I of course did not think that way and I treated those kids as if they were my own, in my own classroom.

So the work began on setting up my class store, bank, and how I would implement my mini economy with the challenging classroom full of kiddos who wanted nothing to do with me. I introduced the idea to the kids, and they LOVED it! I hadn't seen them excited about anything all year. The mundane, boring happenings in the classroom were just NOT working.

We worked together on naming our store and our bank and voted together on who would be the banker and the cashier at the store. Each student filled out a job application and were given a list of jobs that they'd apply to. We then created our money, it was very generic, but worked for what we were trying to do.

Here are some photos of our little store and how we ran things! I made an entire packet for my TPT store that will help other teachers implement their own mini economy. Check it out here!

When you start your mini economy, you'll definitely need to teach about all of the elements that go into working and saving, but that's all included in the packet I made! Let me know how you like it if you use it and if you need any help with what to do, contact me here! Your kids will love it, plus its a great behavioral management technique for any classroom!

Here is the classroom job application and description of all of the jobs we had. You can send this home with the kids and have them fill it out with parents. I also had them write "letters of recommendation" to help them in the decision of what job they should get!

I created these cute little checks and money to use for your mini economy! If you decide you want to fill the checks out online, contact me and I can tailor them to fit your classroom and needs!

Again, check out the full product on my TPT store here and please let me know how I can help you implement this in your classroom!

Melissa