Spending, Saving, Sharing

The Personal Financial Literacy unit in the new math TEKS really has our kiddos thinking! Students are being asked to think outside their little world when it comes to money and financial institutions. Fourth graders across the state are learning what it means to spend, save, and share money... and it is FABULOUS!

Here's a challenge - ask your students (or personal kids) basic questions about money and banking. Their answers will shock you! My students truly think each person has a "locker" in the bank. They elaborated by saying when you travel your bank sends money (via snail mail) to the bank location where you received cash! Needless to say, kiddos these days have wild imaginations.

Here are is a great lesson for teaching spending, saving, and sharing money:

Start by reading "Alexander, Who Used to be Rich Last Sunday." The kids love this read-a-loud. It is also a good reference to the value of money and how it has changed over the years. This is an engaging way to start your lesson! You can buy it from Amazon by clicking here.

Then have your students create a "spending, saving, and sharing" foldable for their math journals. Here is an idea for how this might look:

I tried using an interactive anchor chart and love it! Split large chart paper in three sections and label them in three sections: spending, saving, and sharing. Students will work with the shoulder partner or table team to brainstorm ways to spend, save, and share money. Each pair or group will get three sticky notes, one for each way to use money. Encourage students to be specific in how they will spend, save,  and share money. I had my students keep their answers realistic and think about how it applies to them as nine/ten year olds. Get creative with this! It really does generate great conversation about money.

Use these great task cards to assess your students' knowledge of PFL. You can purchase them from my TPT store. Just click here. 

Click here to access other great products from my TPT store.

5 Tips for Teacher Pay Teachers Beginners

I recently started taking my TPT business more seriously. I've had my TPT account for about two and half years now and haven't been very successful. Don't get me wrong- I have done FINE (about $30-60 a month), but I wanted to do GREAT. I started my TPT account as an experiment. I was already creating resources for my personal classroom, so why not share them and make money while doing it? I have really stepped up my TPT game these last several month and have seen a significant increase in sales.

Disclosure: I am no where close to quitting my job and calling this a career... my TPT income just provides me with extra spending/saving money that I didn't have before. There are some TPT professionals out there that bank! I am just your every day teacher who needs extra cash for savings!

Here are 5 helpful tips for TPT beginners:

1. Become a TPT "Premium Member"
This may seem like a hefty up-front cost ($60/year), but it is totally worth it. You only get about 50% of your sales as a regular member. "Premium Members" gets 85% of what they sell! You do the math... If your products are quality ones, then you will have no trouble getting your $60 back within the first month (+ more!). To become a "Premium Member," go to your dashboard and click the link below your profile picture. You can set up automatic yearly payments through PayPal. Super easy and so worth it!

2. Clean up your Store
This was a HUGE one for me. I had many products that never sold or just weren't quality products. Customers will NOT come back if they buy a crummy product (this includes your freebies, too!). Take your time to think about what is QUALITY and what it not. Just to give you a bigger picture - I had about 25 products in my store and ended up deleting over half of them! I even spent the time to create new cover pages for my products, add more content, and change the font/clipart. Take your time to make your products look nice and make sure the content is quality.

3. Download "Cute" Fonts
Invest in some "cute" fonts. Teachers, especially elementary teachers, want their products to be rigorous and CUTE! You can download font bundles from TPT... just spend some time browsing around. Per Copright law, you cannot use font packages for commercial use unless you have purchased the rights. Be careful! Some font packages allow you to use them for personal use only - they don't always allow you to use them for commercial use (for your TPT products).
I downloaded this font package: Hello Fonts.

4. PROOFREAD
Take your time while creating products. I cannot tell you how many times I had to "edit" a product after it was already posted because I noticed a mistake. This is a pain in the behind. You have to edit your product, then "edit" it in TPT by reposting the file. Luckily, TPT lets you send your edited product to customers who have purchased the product. I have not received negative feedback about this, but I am sure it is a pain at the consumer end because they have to reprint the product. Generally speaking, customers don't like when there are mistakes!

5. Market your Products
I highly recommend creating a separate business email for your TPT account. For example, my store name is "Cool Beans Ed" and my email is that.cool.beans.ed@gmail.com (I had to add "that" because the email I wanted was taken). I also encourage you to create a Pinterest and Facebook page. It never hurts to promote your products! I have seen sales increase since I started my Facebook and Pinterest pages.

Happy TPT-ing.

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Thanks for visiting my page - I am off to play with my sweet little Winston! I just gave him a bath and he's making a mess in the kitchen. ;)