Elementary school students are curious about their world and how it works. They are good at classifying information, solving problems and finding the logic in a situation. Steps to Financial Fitness accommodates this new intellectual curiosity without sacrificing any of the more playful aspects of learning. Stories of the perils and triumphs of other kids and entertaining games enhance the 3-5 curriculum. The activities enable students to develop the skills and understanding needed for sound financial decision-making. They also provide the stepping-stones to the more complicated world of personal finance they will later encounter.

Fifteen lessons, divided into the four theme areas of earning an income, saving, spending and borrowing, and managing money are found in Steps to Financial Fitness. Nine lessons are estimated to take one to two class periods. The other six generally take between 2 to 4 class periods. The activities are categorized as those that are suitable for all students at grades 3-5 and those that may be challenging for some students at the 3-5 grade level.

All lessons focus on having students do various activities and think about or reflect upon their actions. Various resources are available for each lesson. In this manual, there are activity sheets and visuals for the lessons. The activity sheets need to be duplicated for use with the class. Overhead transparencies should be made of the materials labeled as visuals. The Steps to Financial Fitness Student Workouts is a separate document that is used with the lessons in the teacher's resource manual. Each lesson has at least two exercise sheets. There are multiple pages for some of the exercises. The materials and suggested preplanning for each lesson are given in the Equipment and Getting Ready Section of each lesson.

Even though the lessons can be used sequentially, most do not have to be used in sequence. You can pick and choose when and how many of these lessons will be used in your classroom. Lessons 9 and 10 are companion lessons. Both focus on various methods of payments and should be covered in sequence.

The Parents' Guide to Steps to Financial Fitness has activities that parents can do with their children that correspond to the topical areas covered in the lessons. The guide includes content, worksheet activities, other activities, and resources. It is recommended that a guide be provided for each parent. A letter to the parent from the teacher will help gain the cooperation of the parents to do the activities with their children. Eleven "Dear parent" activities in the guide are keyed to various lessons in Steps to Financial Fitness. The student and parents should complete these worksheets at home at the time that the lesson is implemented or as a follow-up so that learning reinforcement occurs. A teacher may want to assign some of the other activities, besides the worksheets, for students to do with their parents. A reminder of when the parents should do a specific activity with their children would be beneficial in developing this school/home educational partnership.

Crosstraining activities are an integral part of the Steps to Financial Fitness curriculum. Crosstraining provides a way to maintain and reinforce financial fitness through such areas as language arts, music, mathematics, and technology. One crosstraining activity is included in each lesson.

Assessment questions are provided at the end of each theme. Each theme has objectives, short-answer, and long-answer questions. You can use some or all of these questions for review or testing purposes. The answer key for each assessment is found at the back of the Teacher Resource Manual.

The CD-ROM contains all of the print materials in PDF format for viewing, searching, and printing purposes, as well as three interactive activities which are based on the "workouts" in the print materials.

You can demo a portion of the interactive activities that are contained on the CD-ROM right now. This is just a sample of the exciting hands-on activities that are contained on the CD-ROM.

Sample activity - grades 3-5
What short-term savings goals do you have? How about long-term savings goals? How long will it take you to save for each? In this activity students learn about saving for short-term and long-term goals.