Trying to find a fun, multi-grade, secular math homeschool curriculum can be overwhelming. We love digital options like Khan Academy and CTC Math to make sure all the fundamentals get covered, but what about the math of every day life? We do use curriculum, which unqualifies us as “unschoolers”, but we do DIY and wing it a fair amount as well. Financial Literacy is such a crucial subject that simply wasn’t touched in my late 80s early 90s traditional elementary and middle school education, but I knew it was incredibly important to give my kids a good foundation in finance as early as possible. Money math is a great cross curricular when kids get into working with decimals and budgeting is math too, but also a truly priceless life skill.

My bestie came up with this one and we’ve had lots of fun with it, as with any DIY curriculum (that’s not actually curriculum) use it as inspo to create something that’s a great fit for your fam!

Here is how we did Farmer’s Market Financial Literacy “creative Curriculum”:

Timeframe- about a month ( I laid this out as we worked on it for a total of about 15-17 days but they were not consecutive) It will take anywhere from 3-6 weeks depending on how you lay it out, and of course it could take much shorter- this could be modified into a min-lesson, or MUCH longer and you could do a super deep dive.

Supplies/Resources:

Khan Academy Financial Literacy Courses/Videos (FREE)- we used the first two parts for this lesson and the rest at other points over the past year- we are still working our way through it! It’s a ton of info!
Various videos and articles linked below.
Google docs and sheets.
5-10 opportunities within a 2 week timeframe for your kiddos to earn money towards the farmers market field trip (with a goal to earn $20-25 before each trip- cash for each kiddo)

Field trips involved: 3 trips to a local farmers market, 2 if you already go to one all the time and your kids are familiar with it and know the prices. 1-2 filed trips to local grocery stores for comparison exercise.

Here is how we executed the “lesson(s)”

Day 1: Discussion- curiosity seeds- record your answers so you can come back to this later. Here are a few examples of “curiosity seeds” for this adventure:

What is Financial Literacy? What is literacy? Why is this important? What do we know about finances? What do we know about the Farmer’s Market? What do we think we will learn (or what do we want to learn/investigate) about FL and FM? Where are our local farmers markets? Do we have more than 1? What day(s) are they held? What do you like to buy at the Farmer’s market? Why are farmer’s markets important?

Day 2: Khan intro video(s), Articles to read and discuss: 9 Reasons to Shop at Farmer’s Markets by Heifer.org (when reading this one one of the kiddos pointed out that they don’t believe #5 to be accurate, so we swerved a bit here and decided to do a side by side comparison between the Farmer’s market and the grocery store, as well as investigate WHY our findings were what they were)

Day 3: Discussion of Farmers Markets Vs grocery stores- discuss creating a printable comparison sheet - discuss what items we think we will compare, discuss taking a survey of our peers/community of which they prefer and why

Day 4: Observation trip to Farmers market- Add comparison items to our DIY sheet (we picked oranges, snap peas, 1 dozen eggs, hummus, a loaf of sourdough, a container of strawberries and 1 heirloom tomato), record prices, visit grocery store, fill in prices, discuss findings.

We read this Food52 Article about the cost vs the VALUE at Local Farmers markets and discussed the added value of supporting individuals/families/small business vs massive corporations like Kroger.

Day 5- Farmer’s Market Accessibility- one of the kiddos brough up accessibility (we had just read about ADA in our Mint & Bloom history curriculum) and added this to our investigation- would we consider our local farmers market “accessible” do they take WIC and EBT? Can people with all abilities, strollers etc access the stands in an equitable way?

We went back to our “Curiosity seeds” from day 1 and added this, also added “cost vs. VALUE” as that was not part of the initial convo and is something that applies in MANY financial decisions through out our lives- so we will be building an exercise in on this next week.

Discuss how the kids will “earn an income” over the next 2 weeks, to bank funds for their grocery shopping trip. This was a dry erase board discussion that we turned into a google doc. Each kid chose a few tasks that, when completed, would earn them about $20-$25

Day 6: We started with this CRASH COURSE VIDEO to give an overview. Then, each kid created a google sheet, “time card” to track their tasks/activities and earnings. This was also the first day of the 2 week earning period so some started on their tasks, some did not. They were also give a choice to have “taxes” withheld from their income, or paid in full at the end of the 2 weeks. We also used some components from Unit 11: Employment of Khan’s Financial Literacy class and this INTRO TO TAXES video from Unit 10.

Day 7- 15 (ongoing) Kids completed their tasks, and banked their cash

Day 7-8 Start planning the the shopping trip- since it is their money that they earned, the kids each got to decide what they would spend it on with the only parameter being they had to make a list of some sort and stay with in the budget they set ahead of time (they did not have to budget ALL of their earnings, but after some discussion we landed on ‘at least 2/3 of what they earn across the 15 days’ ,and they technically could exceed the amount they set, but more on that later). Each kiddo got a sheet with "total to spend at the market” to set their personal market budget and did some brainstorming as to what they would spend it on. We used the dry erase board and each kid had different colored markers to write ideas down. Some of the ideas were- ingredients and make a meal, kimchee, pickles, a boba, empanadas, kettle corn, fruit, tornado potato, dried fruit, cupcakes, and yogurt. The kids then wrote 3-5 items down on their personal sheet with a line next to each to estimate the cost and a space to write in actual cost when we went to the market to price things out.

Day 9- Visit the market, complete research, record the prices and finalize the items for purchase on our next trip according to budget. This trip also turned into a game of “Chopped” and each kid picked one thing that we had to use in our dinner that night. Highly recommend that, it was a blast.

Day 10-11 Unit 4 “Money Personalities” on Khan Academy’s Financial Literacy life skills

Day 12: Research and gathering we headed to the library for a research day (and a math club meet up) and did some digging through the shelves and online to see what we could learn about financial literacy, budgeting, saving, creating a budget, taxes and of course, Farmer’s Markets! The kids did a “research and report” and brough back what they learned to our table to share with the group. Here are some examples of material that we would look for and share:

Day 13-14 Hands-on/Add some art. Do this however your kids like to express themselves artistically- they could make a mini-doc about a farmers market (or a mini-mock like Best in Show!), they could create a Farmer’s Market with Lego, get out the air-dry clay and make some of their fave foods, paint, draw, create slides in google or Canva- anything! You know your kids best so give them as much or as little structure here as needed.

Day 15- Final day for their paid tasks/activities, finalize their earnings and taxes, make their list and budget for their Farmer’s market field trip and head to the market! If they aren’t too burnt out after all that you can do reflection, discussion after while you eat or do it the next day.

Reflection: After the big trip to the market with their earnings and their shopping list/budget sheet - take some time to discuss and reflect on the experience. Go back to the “curiosity seed” questions from day one and see what you already knew, what you learned and talk about what you would do differently next time. Were you under budget? Over budget? How did having budget and/or shopping list impact the shopping trip?

I’ve listed some additional resources below too! Enjoy!