Samir's birthday budget challenge

The suite of LifeSkills Money Skills content has recently been updated, find out more here.

This lesson features in the financial education scheme of learning for 5-11 year olds. A ready-made sequence of curriculum linked resources to help you build progression in your learners' knowledge over time. Visit the Scheme of learning homepage to support with your planning.

Samir’s birthday budget challenge is a fun story-based interactive activity inviting pupils to follow Samir as he spends his birthday budget, keeping an eye out for clues along the way to solve the mystery of the missing money. The activity encourages pupils to explore key financial skills like budgeting and teaches them about digital and cashless transactions.

This lesson is part of our financial literacy content for ages 7-11 designed to teach children about money, whilst developing core transferable skills such as problem solving, aiming high (proactivity) and listening and speaking (communication).

Resources

• Samir’s birthday budget challenge: Lesson plan – for use with a group of pupils in the classroom
• Samir’s birthday budget challenge: Presentation slides – to display to pupils and use alongside a lesson plan

Lesson learning outcomes

By the end of the lesson pupils will be able to:

• Understand key financial terminology
• Understand the value of money
• Understand how to manage and use money in an increasingly digital or cashless society and how to keep money safe
• Use the core transferable skill of problem solving to work out where the missing money may have gone

They also develop pupils’ core transferable skills such as problem solving and communication. 

This lesson aligns to the Young Money Financial Education Planning Framework and has been awarded the Young Money Quality Mark.

Help your pupils put their budgeting skills into practice with this BBC Teach Super Movers video, which helps young people understand the arithmetic needed to calculate change with a catchy song.

If you want to increase your own confidence to teach young people about money, Young Money provide free e-learning training to teachers across Primary and Secondary education. In addition, National Numeracy has a free website which helps you practise and refresh your everyday maths skills.