Practical Money Skills Resource Roadmap for Educators

If you're looking to incorporate money lessons into your classroom, Canada's Practical Money Skills is a great place to start. Use the below guide to navigate around the site and learn about available resources. Whether you're introducing this topic to your students for the first time or you want to reinforce what you're currently doing, Practical Money Skills offers a wide array of free lesson plans, online games, videos, calculators, and more.

Homepage

		Spotlights Seasonal and timely updates and articles from Practical Money Skills.
		Learning Educational and insightful articles to help both students and adults navigate their financial lives – be it paying for university, understanding their credit score, or joining the workforce.
		Practical Money Matters Article Series A bi-monthly article series written by Carla Hindman, Director of Financial Education for Visa Canada, on a variety of topics including avoiding financial scams, tips for buying a car, and protecting against identity theft.

For Educators

Choices & Decisions: Taking charge of your financial life™ will give students a deeper understanding of money management. Lesson plan components include:

		Teacher's Guides Offers lesson goals, objectives, timelines, suggested classroom discussions, and more.
		In-class Activities Interactive activities to put students' new skills to the test.

Online Games

Games can be powerful teaching tools, and Visa is a leader in producing dynamic, educational video games that engage and motivate students of all ages, while teaching them important money management skills and values. Available games include:

		Financial Soccer A multilingual video game developed in partnership with FIFA that challenges students to answer multiple-choice questions about money management.
		Money Metropolis This dynamic, educational video game allows kids ages 7-12 to navigate a multidimensional world, making life decisions that will affect whether their virtual bank account shrinks or grows.
		Peter Pig's Money Counter In this game, kids ages 4-7 can practice sorting and counting coins with the help of wise Peter Pig.
		Road Trip to Savings Players steer their way to financial stability by making decisions about income, expenses and savings.
		Ed's Bank Young children help Ed save money for a trip to the store by dragging and dropping coins into a piggy bank.

Financial Calculators

Our calculators are a great tool for students looking to forecast and assess their financial choices. Student-friendly calculators include:

		Saving for a Goal Calculates how much users need to set aside on an ongoing basis in order to meet a specific goal.
		Back to School Students can track school expenses, make necessary adjustments, and hit the stores armed with a pre-determined budget.
		Building an Education Fund Students can determine the savings they'll need for tuition, books, materials, off-campus housing, food, and more.

Personal Finance

A wealth of information for all ages is available on the basics of personal finance, including saving, budgeting and dealing with credit. The topics are broken down into "life events" like saving for college, getting married, buying a home, preparing for retirement, and more.

Resources

Participate in a fun Practical Money Skills poll or download free materials created for both consumers and teachers.

With a diverse range of resources, Practical Money Skills hopes to empower educators, enable student learning, and help provide people of all ages with the tools necessary for financial success.

To order a free CD of the Choices & Decisions lesson plans and/or a free Financial Soccer CD, please fill out this form.