Kiddynomics: An Economics Curriculum for Young Learners is a set of lessons designed to introduce young children to the economic way of thinking. Informed decision-making is a critical thinking skill that students can use throughout their school, personal, and work lives. And, as citizens in a democratic society, they should understand basic principles of how the economy operates. Beginning economic education early and building on that learning throughout students’ education is the best way to ensure they develop vital decision-making skills.

Students learn about saving, savings goals, interest, borrowing and opportunity cost by reading Less Than Zero. Students use a number line and a line graph to track spending and borrowing in the story.

This online activity shows how to use FRED, the Federal Reserve's free economic data website, to measure changes in the cost of living in your lifetime. Each month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) collects data on prices consumers pay for tens of thousands of goods and services, everything from software to car insurance. Using rigorous statistical methods, the BLS transforms this mountain of price data into the consumer price index (CPI). The CPI is a numerical index that measures inflation by tracking monthly changes in prices urban dwellers pay for a diverse market basket of thousands of goods and services. Following simple instructions, you will locate the overall level of U.S. consumer prices as it existed on your birth date. You will then compare that level with the level today to see how prices have inflated during your lifetime. FRED's ability to create a graph with a custom index scale will allow you to visualize the rise in prices over your lifetime.

Students are read the story Little Nino's Pizzeria and identify the inputs in a pizza, categorizing them as intermediate goods, natural resources, human resources, and capital resources. They use a Venn diagram to sort attributes of each restaurant mentioned in the story and the attributes the restaurants share. As an assessment, students write a restaurant review, categorizing the inputs of pizza.

Students learn about consumers and producers and give examples from the book The Little Red Hen Makes a Pizza. They become producers by making bookmarks. The students draw pictures on their bookmarks of something that happened at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of the story. They become consumers when they use their bookmarks to mark a page in a book they are reading.

Students will compare the price of goods from one time period to another and through discussion and role play interpret the effects of inflation on consumers. They will categorize goods and services according to the eight major groups of the consumer price index and be able to determine the difference between the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and the core CPI.

Students listen to the story Meet Kit about a young girl's life in America during the Great Depression. They learn through discussion and role-playing about the impact that unemployment and reduced consumer and business spending can have on people's lives.

In the book, Messy Bessey's Holidays, Bessey wants to make holiday cookies to give as presents to her friends. Students learn the factors of production, natural resources, human resources and capital resources (capital goods); as well as the intermediate goods used in making cookies. As assessment of knowledge, students classify factors of production and intermediate goods.

Inflation, unemployment, recession, economic growth—these economic concepts affect people in very real ways. In this course containing three interactive, thought-provoking lessons, you will learn about monetary policy, the avenue by which the Federal Reserve System attempts to influence the economy.

Students listen to a story written in rhyme about a bunny who has a lot of money in her piggy bank. Students distinguish between spending and saving and goods and services. They play a matching game to review the content of the story and to practice rhyming words.

Teaching market structures in a microeconomics class? These slides present graphs related to monopolistic competition, the market structure in which there are many firms that produce similar, but not identical, products and there are few barriers to entry. The slides illustrate firms' short-run decisions.

Teaching market structures in a microeconomics class? These slides present graphs related to monopoly, the market structure in which there is only one producer of a good or service and there are high barriers to entry. The slides illustrate firms' short-run decisions.

Students listen to the story and identify the scarcity problem the monsters had not enough chairs for every monster to have one. Students wear a picture of a want they have drawn and play a version of musical chairs in which the chairs are labeled goods. Students learn that a good can satisfy a want. They also learn that, because of scarcity, not everyone's wants are satisfied.

After reading the book My Side of the Mountain, students discuss the human capital that Sam possessed, the investments in human capital that he made and why these investments were important. Students work in groups to help them define and understand the meaning of investment in human capital, and they create a plan for investing in their human capital.

We are faced with the need to make decisions, both big and small, on a daily basis. The earlier young people learn how to make a good decision, the better their decision-making skills will be. In this short course in our Ella's Adventures series, your students will read and listen to a story about Ella, who has decisions to make. While most of her decisions are easy, she runs across a hard one and employs a decision-making tool to help solve her problem.

Students learn the definition of entrepreneurship and are introduced to the characteristics of entrepreneurs. Students are asked to apply these characteristics to themselves and people in their own communities by completing a story pyramid and then writing a short story that demonstrates how entrepreneurial activity can contribute to higher standards of living.

This last lesson in the Economics and the Great Migration curriculum studies the practice of redlining, whose impacts on neighborhoods are still felt today over 50 years after its abolishment.

The economic collapse of the 1930s caused the U.S. government to develop new policies to put Americans back on their feet again. Many of these programs centered on growing the housing stock and providing tools for households to begin generating wealth. Discrimination did not allow for Black Americans to have an equal opportunity at building a middle-class lifestyle—the bedrock of the American Dream. These inequities began an ever-widening wealth gap that has impacted generations far removed from the original policies.

Students listen to the story Ox-Cart Man in which a father and his family use various resources to produce goods. As you read the story aloud to the students, place special emphasis on identifying both how it takes resources to make goods and who buys the goods in a market. Students will then participate in a simulation of the circular flow of the economy. They will use examples from the story to apply the concepts learned and model how the circular flow shows the interdependence between people and businesses in the resource and goods/services markets.

The Panic of 1907 was a financial crisis set off by a series of bad banking decisions and a frenzy of withdrawals caused by public distrust of the banking system. J.P. Morgan and other wealthy Wall Street bankers lent their own funds to save the country from a severe financial crisis. But what happens when a single man or small group of men have the power to control the finances of a country? In this lesson, students will learn about the Panic of 1907 and the measures Morgan used to finance and save the major banks and trust companies. Students will also practice close reading to analyze texts from the Pujo hearings, newspapers, and reactionary articles to develop an evidence-based argument about whether or not a money trust—a Morgan-led cartel—existed.

Teaching market structures in a microeconomics class? These slides present graphs related to perfect competition, the market structure in which there are many buyers and sellers of an identical product and there are no barriers to enter or exit the market. The slides illustrate firms' short-run decisions.