Money, Money, Money!
K-12 Program
Have you ever sat down and thought what people did before money was created. How did people buy things? How did people exchange goods and services? Money today is something that we as people start to learn at a very young age. Money, whether it be dollars, Euros, Rubles, Pesos, or Pounds, is a powerful tool within a global marketplace.
Today, money is a fact of life, and there are many different currencies that we operate under. Think about Native Americans who lugged around stands of beads they represented money. This form of currency was known at Wampum, and was adopted by the Massachusetts Bay colony as legal tender in 1637. From there, we moved on to Continentals, which were used to finance the American Revolutionary. Green Backs were then used to finance the Civil War, and finally today, we use what are known as Federal Reserve Notes.
Whether we like it or not, money is probably here to stay. We, the United States, are now in the process of changing our currency's look, and in the future, it looks as though electronic money is the latest fad. We are calling this digital cash, and we are already exchanging over the internet and through debit cards. Where will the future take us with money?
Continue to explore the following sites to learn more about money!!!
History of Money
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/on2/money/history.html
http://library.thinkquest.org/28718/history.html#Barter
http://minneapolisfed.org/econed/curric/history.cfm
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/moolah/history.html
Exchange Rates
http://www.thefinancials.com/vortex/CurrencyFormatsTable.html
http://www.x-rates.com/
Currencies of the World
http://www.banknotes.com/images.htm
http://aes.iupui.edu/rwise/notedir/mappage.html
Activities
Get in groups of 4 or 5 and brainstorm about what you think the future of money will be. Will we have money or will we use a different way to acquire the things we need? If we use money will it be made out of paper or metal, or will it be made out of something totally different? Draw an example of the way things will be bought in the future.
Use the money around the world worksheet http://www.depts.ttu.edu/dpe/k12/Stones-ExchangeWksht.pdf and have students work out exchange rates. This worksheet shows the exchange rate for 8 countries around the world. Talk to your students about exchange rates and how they change daily. Look at the link http://www.x-rates.com/) to see how the exchange rates have changed since the date the worksheet shows. Have your students read through the top chart and ask any questions they may have. They will then look at the bottom chart and do the conversions using calculators. Work individually, in pairs, or as a class, depending on the grade level.