Overview of Activities

Below you can find a summary of each of the SEND Activities

We’ve grouped them into some key themes, so you can easily find activities that look at the areas you want to focus on.

Recognising Money Keeping track of money and budgeting

Coins,coins,coins

Difficulty: Beginner

Children will learn to recognise coins and their value, through a series of short, fun activities and games. You could deliver this in preparation for the Let’s Play Shops activity.

Ways to Pay

Difficulty: Intermediate

Children will understand the similarities and difference between various ‘plastic’ cards that are used to pay for things in shops. They use a ‘decision tree’ to select methods of payment and to make spending choices. Children then explain their decisions by giving advice to a fictional character. You could deliver this activity in conjunction with Going Digital.

Going Digital

Difficulty: Intermediate/Advanced

This activity supports children to understand the ways that people pay for things digitally, by exploring various ways to pay through role play.

Cost and value for money

Let’s Play Shops

Difficulty: Beginner

For this activity, children will develop an awareness of how money is used and what it is worth by role-playing, buying various items from a ‘shop’. You might want to deliver the ‘Coins, coins, coins’ activity in preparation for this.

A Sporting Chance

Difficulty: Expert

This activity explores the cost of items and value for money through ticket sales to local sports games/matches. You might want to deliver ‘A Sporting Chance’ along with our ‘A Sporting Fan’ activity.

The Super Supper Challenge

Difficulty: Intermediate/Advanced

Children will choose meal or a snack that they could enjoy within your setting. Working within a given shopping budget they will plan for and potentially buy ingredients.

This challenge will help children to understand budgeting and making spending choices with money, based on needs, wants and priorities

Budget Bonanza

Difficulty: Advanced

Children will take control of the budget for a group trip. They will develop an understanding of how and why it is important to plan and track spending and take other people’s spending opinions into consideration.

Please note that this activity asks children to plan a real-life trip for your group or organisation and will require a budget of your choice to be spent. This may not be suitable for all settings.

Household Budgeting

Difficulty: Expert

Children will explore household budgeting through Billy and his family. They will find out the important role that money plays in our everyday lives, including the things people need to spend money on and will see how people plan and manage household budgets

You may choose to extend this activity by also delivering the Billy’s Payslip activity.

Needs,wants and priorities

Packing for Antarctica

Difficulty: Intermediate

Children will understand needs and wants, by packing for a trip to Antarctica. They will begin to recognise that people might make different money choices to their own. We recommend delivering this lesson in conjunction with the ‘To Buy or Not to Buy’ activity.

To buy or not to buy

Difficulty: Intermediate/Advanced

Through the character of Sahana, children will learn about making money choices, based on priorities, needs and wants. We recommend completing this activity after delivering the Packing for Antarctica activity.

Managing money and making money choices and decisions

Toy Time

Difficulty: Intermediate

Children consider the cost of buying toys and how long it would take to save up for a toy. It helps them understand that they can make choices when it comes to spending and saving and that others may make different choices.

Shopping Sense

Difficulty: Advanced

Children explore the concept of ‘fairness’ and engage with real-life dilemmas about how to spend money ethically. They will develop an understanding of some of the ways supermarkets merchandise goods and can make informed spending decisions.

A Sporting Fan

Difficulty: Advanced/Expert

This activity explores how easy it can be to get ‘carried away’ spending money, using the example of being a fan of a sports team. Children will think carefully about what can influence their spending, how much money it would cost to ‘have everything’ and why we should think carefully about how we use money. This activity would follow on well from the ‘A Sporting Chance’ activity.

Keeping money

How do we pay for things?

Difficulty: Intermediate

Children learn step by step how we earn money through working, as well as how we access our money to pay for things, using either cash or a debit card, when wages are paid into a bank account.

Keeping a Record

Difficulty: Intermediate

In a simple, yet sensible way, this activity shows children how they can keep track of money, by creating and using records to track their money and keep it in a safe place.

Money through the ages

Difficulty: Intermediate

Through a timeline game, this activity teaches children how money has developed over time, as well as how money looks today and how we see money being used now.

Why do people have jobs?

Difficulty: Intermediate

Through learning about jobs people do, children will gain an understanding of where money comes from and that people are paid to work.

World of Work

Difficulty: Expert

How do people earn money? How does what people earn affect their spending and saving choices? Invite a volunteer or outside speaker into your setting and help this topic ‘come alive’ when they tackle concepts such as salaries and job satisfaction in a real-life context.

Billy’s Payslip

Difficulty: Expert

For this activity, children begin to develop an understanding of tax through Billy’s Payslip and will explore how this helps to provide things that we all need.