Even though I was not sure if the kids were laughing at me or my joke, I moved on with my lesson plan. I first wanted to teach the class some ideas about money. While money is perceived as a very simple concept, I asked the class: What is money? I received answers like, “money is green”, “money is good”, and “money can get you things.” These were all right answers but not what I was looking for.

Following my lesson plan, I proceeded to explain to the class the characteristics of money.
Has anyone ever had a homework assignment get wet? What happens to it? It turns to mush because it’s made of paper. Well what is money made out of?

No one knows the right answers, so I go to explain how it’s made of cotton and linen and ask: What happens if money gets wet, does it turn to mush?

They begin to understand. So then I explain – one characteristic of money is that it is durable. If money was not durable then people would not value it.

In the light of my poorly told joke, I attempt to explain the next concept, that money must be divisible. I ask: What if you had a cow and I had two sheep, but you only wanted one sheep, what should be done? One student asserts that we should cut the cow in half, the class laughs. I say, you could do that but what if it’s a milk cow. This leads me to explain that money must be divisible, or else someone is going to lose out in every transaction.

Lastly, I want to explain that money must be transportable. If money was not transportable it would be very difficult and time consuming to make transactions. What if I had to carry a bag of gems to the store to buy food? I could but that would be inefficient.

We then talk about bartering and trading for a few minutes, some students shock me with their knowledge of the early forms of money — such as sea shells.

For the next part of my lesson, I seek to have the students distinguish between needs and wants. I was shocked to hear some of the crazy things they want, stay tuned to find out what they were.