Classroom Currency

In the real world people are paid to do well in their jobs, and they have to learn how to carefully manage the money they earn.  Your job is to be the best student that you can be.  Wouldn’t it be great to get paid for working hard?  This year you will, and you can spend it on stuff you want at school!

You will get paid for things like showing up on time at school, having all of your supplies, completing your homework, good grades, and even good behavior.  If you’re careful with budgeting your money, there are privileges, goods, and services you can buy.  We will have a treasure chest that will have some fun stuff you can buy at an auction at the end of every week.  At the end of every quarter we will auction off the big stuff.  Save up your money because the highest bidder wins.

Ways you can earn money:

Signing in on time every day before the bell rings at 8:55:  $2

Bringing in your Friday Folder with parent signature on Monday morning:  $3

Having all of your supplies for a supply check:  $2

Earning a grade of an A for an assignment:   $4

Earning a grade of a B for an assignment:  $2

Turning in homework on time:  $4

Adding a link to the reading caterpillar: $4

Keeping all of your good behavior points for the day: $3

Gift certificates from the teacher: Amount varies

Contributing an article that we publish in our class newsletter: $4

Every 1,000 grains of rice earned on freerice.com: $1

Ways you can spend money:

Purchase items from the classroom store:  (pencil $5, pen $10, dry erase marker $20, bottle of glue or glue stick $20, tape $20, scissors $25, ruler $20)

Purchase items from weekly auction: Highest bidder

Purchase items from quarterly auction: Highest bidder

Class movie party: $120 per person.  Everyone must participate. (other people can donate to the cause if they want to spend their money that way)

Free class period: $80.  Everyone must participate.

Skip one homework assignment $75

Free computer / video game time at designated times: $5

Educational computer games (on the mr-bonner.com web site) at designated times: Free

We will have a special computer in our room that will be our banking computer.  You will use your student ID card to log in so you can manage your account.

You can keep some of the money in your wallet or purse to purchase things you want during the day.  Some of your money will be in your savings account that you can access with the bank computer.  Every night you will earn 5% interest on the money you keep in the bank.  Say, for example, you have $20 in the bank.  You will earn $1 every night.  If you have $200 in the bank, you’ll make $10 every night.  If you only have $10, you make $1 every two nights.  If you have nothing in the bank, you get $0.  Does this sound complicated?  It’s really not.  The more you have in the bank, the more money you make just letting it sit there.

If you want to make a deposit, there will be a deposit envelope with your name on it next to the banking computer.  Put the bucks you want to deposit into the envelope and place the envelope in the deposit basket.  If you want to withdraw cash, find the notecard with your name on it and write the amount of cash you want on one of the lines.

Important:  Treat your bucks like you would real money.  If it gets lost or stolen, you are completely responsible for the loss.  The safest place for your money is in the bank.  It’s ok to carry a little bit of money with you to make small purchases. 

Some of your money will be working for you in our classroom stock market that we’ll start 2nd semester.

What does our money look like?  The design I chose is very similar to the Euro, the currency people in Europe use.  I thought the different colors would be more fun than plain green money.