JA Ourselves introduces kindergarten students to the intersection of financial literacy and early elementary grades social studies learning objectives. Through hands-on classroom activities, the program provides students with an introduction to personal economics and the choices consumers make to meet their needs and wants. It also introduces students to the role of money in society while providing them with practical information about earning, saving, and sharing money.
JA Ourselves is a series of five activities recommended for students in kindergarten. The average time for each activity is 30 minutes. Materials are packaged in a self-contained kit that includes detailed activity plans for the volunteer and materials for 30 students.
All JA programs are designed to support the skills and competencies identified by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills. JA programs also correlate to state standards in social studies, English, and mathematics, and to Common Core State Standards.
|Pillars of Student Success||Entrepreneurship:||Financial-Literacy:||Work-Readiness:|
|Program Implementation||Program Grade-Level|
|Program Concepts||Program Skills|
|Buying, choices, costs, earning, giving, goals, goods and services, interests, money, needs and wants, saving, society, spending, values||Counting, decision making, drawing conclusions, following directions, graphing and graph interpretation, listening, matching and classifying, predicting, problem solving, reading and writing, self-assessment, sequencing, teamwork, verbal communication, vocabulary building|
Session One: This or That? Make a Choice
Students practice economics by making personal choices.
Session Two: Do I Need What I Want?
Students begin to understand that people have basic needs and wants and that money-smart people know the difference between them.
Session Three: A Penny Earned
Storybook characters help students learn about ways to earn money.
Session Four: A Penny Saved
Students learn the importance of saving and having a savings goal.
Session Five: A Penny Shared
Through storybook characters, students learn about earning money to help others in their community.