Activities on Balancing the Budget

[cwc]

Does anyone have any suggestions for any class activity or game on school finance or balancing the budget?

I've had to raise money for years to pay for the school yearbook. It receives no money from the school district. The best way to keep all money raised is to form a Yearbook Backers Club, which parents and alumni sponsor. Keep good records, work closely with your staff and parents. Each year have a parent audit your books. If possible, keep your funds out of the school's hands.

Our Middle School Mathematics teacher makes "Monopoly" a part of her budgeting unit. The students have to compose a proposed budget and each one has his/her own individual "checking account" at the BANK OF MONOPOLY. She makes checks, deposit slips, etc. on her computer and gives each of them a real check register in which to record transactions. She prints each of them a "monthly" statement that they are required to balance.

The game actions become their life situations and they have to write checks to the property owners, etc. She even tacks on a finance charge if their balances plunge below their minimum requirement.

I don't know the details of how she plans and implements the unit, but both of my daughters have been through her "Monopoly" experience and gained a LOT of "real life" useful information~Not to mention they LOVED it! They had fun and had no idea the wealth of knowledge they were gaining!

[gigi2828]

If you are interested in talking about the Federal Budget at all, there is a lesson I found helpfull at EconEdlink. I just printed out some of the worksheets for my class rather than working online. You could probably also adapt this to fit school finance as well. Here is the link:

http://www.econedlink.org/lessons/in...m?lesson=EM306

I work on a unit about budgeting by telling my middle schoolers they are getting married and I am sponsoring the wedding at $500.00. They must choose all sorts of things needed for a wedding. Such as the cake, the dress, the before and after festivities. You could use this with lots of different situations even as a funeral. We do writing, where we list items and girls especially become aware of the expense. Everyone seems to enjoy it. I let them use magazines, have guest speakers, and everything.They get a chance to search the web for help. It depends on how long you want to have the unit, ours is usually a couple of weeks.