Paying bills in real life is not a lot of fun. But practicing the skills you will need to pay real bills later can be a lot of fun for high school students.
Homeschool Fun for High School – Consumer Math Games
Our homeschool co-op has been tackling Consumer Math and Economics this year, and we used Alpha-Omega LifePacs and PaceMaker Economics (Globe Fearon) for the foundation of our curriculum, but some of the best learning has actually happened during the supplemental game playing we added to keep the class fun.
There are lots of online resources to help teens learn about money management, and these are some sites you might want to check out for supplementing your curriculum:
Practical Money Skills for Life – Financial Literacy for Everyone has articles, games, different types of calculators and videos among their free resources.
Math Games.com has games that can reinforce consumer math skills. While most of the games are geared to younger students, there are some games that practice skills such as unit pricing, calculating tips, and comparing coupons.
In addition to online resources, we played old-school board games like Life and Monopoly immediately after learning about the financial literacy concepts that show up in those games. We also laughed really, really hard!
When my son Jonah offered to “help out” another player by “adopting” his kid (he bought him!) in a game of Life, it became one of the greatest running gags of our co-op year. Whenever Connor does something wonderful at co-op and one of the moms applauds him for it, the other kids say, “Yeah, sure, Connor’s great…but don’t forget he SOLD his kid to Jonah!”
There’s lots of silliness involved, but there’s also real learning. The idea that raising kids is expensive looks one way when you are the kid who’s being told, “Sorry, we can’t afford it right now.” It looks very different when you are playing Life and find you have no money to put toward college for your plastic-peg children!
The concept of wisely spending money in order to make money becomes very concrete when you are playing Monopoly, carefully saving your dough, only to see your friend sweep a win by recklessly building hotels on every property.
What are some games you can add to your homeschool to learn financial literacy and maintain the FUN?
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Another piece of preparing for responsible adulthood is Career Exploration. Vicki’s etext is a guided, practical workbook that takes teens through an exploration of their gifts and interests, their struggles and personality quirks, and helps them find careers that might be a good fit. Click here to check out Career Exploration in our ebookstore. There’s also a FREE questionnaire you can download to get you started thinking about the years to come in the work force!
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Looking for an interactive Financial Literacy text? Check out our Financial Literacy from a Christian Perspective.
Want to learn more about teaching your teen about financial literacy? Check out this compilation of posts – available to you at no cost!
Homeschool Fun for High School – Consumer Math Games