Open Wide, Look Inside

Start Saving, Henry! is a fun book about a seven-year old mouse who learns the lesson about saving his allowance money to buy a toy he wants, and, he learns how hard it can be to not buy everything you want.

Curriculum Connections:  Start Saving, Henry! is a good book for teaching the concepts that people make choices because they cannot have everything they want, and that people save money for the future purchase of  goods and services. SOLs 1.8 and 1.9

Additional Resources:
This website has another book that can be read and used in a classroom activity to reinforce the concepts of making choices about purchases, and not being able to buy everything you want.

This website is very kid friendly.  It offers some online games and information about coins, including how they are made, and U.S. Mints.

This website has pictures of what money looks like in different countries around the world.  It would be a great way to tie the lesson to whatever other countries you may be studying.

General Information:
Book: Start Saving, Henry!
Author: Nancy Carlson
Illustrator: Nancy Carlson
Publisher: Penguin Group
Pages:  32
Grade Range: K-2
ISBN:  9780670011476

The Top Job, by Elizabeth Cody Kimmel and illustrated by Robert Neubecker is a book that tells the story of a class who tells stories about what jobs their parents have.  The children start by telling of the amazing jobs their parents have, such as jewelers, astronomers, and NASCAR drivers.  One student tells her classmates that her father changes light bulbs.  After the students begin to laugh at her, she tells the story of how her father took her to help change a light bulb.  She tells that they went to New York City and changed the light bulb at the top of the Empire State Building.  The class loves the story and even wants to go with her next time.  This can be a great way to introuduce the idea of different jobs to kindergarten students, and then elaborate on some of the jobs they will learn to recognize.

Curriculum Connections
This book would be good way to teach children that there are many different jobs.  It works with VA Science SOL K.6.

Additional Resources

• The official site of the Empire State Building allows the children to explore the building that is a major part of the story.
• This pop-up game lets students match jobs to the task they perform.  It is a good way to review after they are taught the jobs.
• Learning to Give provides a lesson plan that helps kids match jobs to the tasks that they perform.
  

Book: The Top Job
Author: Elizabeth Cody Kimmel
Illustrator: Robert Neubecker
Publisher: Dutton Juvenile
Publication Date: July 2007
Pages: 32 pages
Grade Range: K-1
ISBN-13: 978-0525477891

The Beloved Dearly written by Doug Cooney and illustrated by Tony DiTerlizzi is a book about a boy names Ernie who can always in of a way to make money.  Most of the ideas he dream up get him interviews with the school principal, however.  Or serious ultimatums from his father, like the latest one—any more get-rich-quick schemes and Ernie will be grounded.  This is a threat Ernie takes seriously.   So he keeps his father in the dark about his newest entrepreneurial endeavor.
 

Ernie is a twelve-year-old tycoon, always on the lookout for a fast buck.  This time he stumbles onto a money-making bonanza:  pet funerals.  He hires Dusty to decorate the burial boxes and Tony to dig the holes, but his prize find is Swimming Pool, a tomboy who delivers a crying jag not to be missed.  Business goes through the roof-until Ernie loses Swimming Pool over a raise and the whole venture unravels.  Here is a rollicking, fun spirited novel about friendship, loos, business-and how we learn to express our feelings.

Curriculum Connections

This book could be used as a reference when teaching SOL 3.9 which states that students will identify examples of making and economic choice and will explain the idea of opportunity cost(what is given up when making a choice).

Additional Resources

1.  Learn more about the author, Doug Cooney and some of his other books.

2.  The Pickle Patch Bathtub is a lesson plan used to teach the concept of opportunity cost.

3. This site defines opportunity cost and has questions and activities to help teach the concept.

Book:  The Beloved Dearly
Author:  Doug Cooney
Illustrator:  Toni DiTerlizzi
Publisher:  Aladdin
Publication Date:  2003
Pages:  192
Grade Range:3-6
ISBN:  0-689-83127-7

The basics of economics–goods, services, producers, and consumers–are presented in Goods and Services by Janeen R. Adil.  The simple text provides kid-friendly examples of goods and services:  an eye doctor provides a service when she checks a child’s vision; she provides goods when she sells glasses.   The straightforward photographs show children and adults as producers and consumers in everyday situations:  Joe sells his old toys at a yard sale, then he takes the money he makes to buy school supplies he needs and a book he wants.  The book ends with a glossary of terms.

Connections

Goods and Services will provide first-graders with a good introduction to the basic vocabulary of economics:  goods, services, producers, and consumers (VA History and Social Studies SOL 1.7).  Second- and third-graders can read this book for review before a unit on economics.

Additional Resources

• Janeen R. Adil has written other basic books about economics for young children including Supply and Demand and Scarcity.
   
• Learn how everyday goods, such as crayons and sneakers, are made by watching videos at How People Make Things, a PBS Kids webpage.
• Younger students will enjoy deciding whether a producer provides a good or a service in this matching activity from the Council for Economic Education.
     
• Students can practice counting out coins from their piggy banks to purchase goods from The Market in this on-line activity.
   

Book:  Goods and Services
Author: Janeen R. Adil
Illustrator: Multiple photo sources
Publisher: Capstone Press
Publication Date: January 1, 2006
Pages: 24
Grade Range: K – 3 
ISBN-13: 978-0736853958