Young children are hands-on learners. They relate to concrete experience and to stories about children just like them. Pocket Power uses an illustrated series of stories to teach personal finance concepts. Teachers present simple and fun classroom projects related to the stories in Pocket Power. The concepts presented provide a foundation for future financial fitness. Even the smallest children understand their decisions are important and that, if they think about choices, they will be happy with the results.

Sixteen lessons divided into the five theme areas of earning an income, saving, spending, borrowing, and managing money, are found in the K-2 document. Each lesson, if fully implemented, will generally take two class periods. Most lessons include two to three major activities besides the Warm-up (introduction) and the Cool Down (summary and review). The activities are categorized as those suitable for all students at grades K-2 and those that may be challenging for some students at the K-2 level.

For each lesson, there is a story the teacher reads to the children found in the storybook, Penny and Nicholas: The Pocket Power Kids. The storybook is sequential in that it flows from story l to story 16. Yet, each of the stories can stand alone. Accordingly, a teacher who wants to use some of the lessons and not all of them can still use the stories with the selected lessons.

The Parents' Guide has activities that parents can do with their children. The Parents' 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. 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 materials for Grades K-2. Crosstraining provides a way to maintain and reinforce financial fitness through such areas as language arts, music, mathematics, technology, and physical education. One crosstraining activity is included for each lesson within the print materials, and several additional crosstraining activities are listed here.

Assessment questions are provided at the end of each theme. Questions are provided for different levels of students in your classes in each of the five assessment sections. As is shown by the individuals in the storybook, children enjoy learning about personal finance. It is an interdisciplinary area where language arts, computation, economics, finance, reasoning, and decision making are all brought together.

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 stories 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 K-2
In this activity the lesson of earning an income comes to life! Join the Pocket Power Kids Penny and Nicholas as they learn about earning an income in the animated story, "A Very Good Day." Following the story students then have the opportunity to participate in a quiz on the story they just saw.