Granny Patricia welcomes students to GreatCents City to explore earning income, recognizing how education, training, and experience can increase their earning potential. Through activities like brainstorming ways to make money and planning a vacation, students connect financial planning to real-life decisions.

Pablo welcomes students to explore economic basics, understanding how people make economic choices based on resources and opportunity costs. Through activities like identifying goods, services, and advertisements, distinguishing between wants and needs, and exploring the relationship between producers and consumers, students connect economic concepts to their everyday lives.

Iris guides students through opportunity cost , helping them understand how economic choices are shaped by limited resources and trade-offs. Through activities like analyzing favorite companies, considering potential jobs, and exploring scarcity’s impact on career availability, students learn how every decision comes with alternatives and consequences.

Anabell guides students through entrepreneurship, helping them understand how businesses generate profit and the risks involved in starting one. Through activities like defining a business, planning for costs, and creating a business idea, students explore how economic conditions shape success. By the end, they will apply their learning by developing and presenting their own mini business plan.

Roscoe the talking raccoon guides students through the concept of human capital, helping them understand how knowledge, skills, and abilities contribute to personal growth and earning potential. Through activities like exploring the stages of growth in nature, identifying ways education, training, and experience impact earnings, and creating a one-year growth plan, students will reflect on their own development and plan for future success. By the end of the lesson, they will be able to explain how human capital increases over time and how they can grow their own to achieve their goals.

Chores, Jobs & Careers: Exploring How We Earn!

Join Amir as students discover the difference between a job and a career, explore how different cultures earned a source of income, and learn how human capital—our knowledge, skills, and experiences—can shape our future. Through historical comparisons, personal reflection, and interviews, students will investigate different ways people earn money and create their own career map.

Ways of Getting Paid!

Join Leona as students explore three main ways people earn money: Wage, Salary, and Commission. They’ll compare the education and training needed for different careers, research income potential, and analyze how job requirements affect pay. Through interactive activities, students will identify which payment method fits various professions and reflect on the pros and cons of each. By the end, they’ll be able to clearly distinguish between these three ways of earning income.

Hey My Pay!: Understanding Your Paycheck and Taxes

Join Eliseo as students investigate why a paycheck might be smaller than expected, exploring the differences between Gross Pay, Deductions, and Net Pay. They’ll compare various payment methods, analyze pay stubs, and discover how income tax works — including why people earning more often pay a higher percentage in taxes. Through interactive role-play, paycheck breakdowns, and an Income Tax Calculator, students will see how earnings, taxes, and other factors impact the money they actually get to spend.

Taxes!: Funding Our Shared Community

Join Vira — along with the Mayor — as students explore how taxes pay for the things we all share. They’ll investigate Sales Tax, Income Tax, and Property Tax, learning the differences between regressive, proportional, and progressive taxes. Students will research their mayor, governor, and president, discover how local, state, and federal government use tax dollars, and understand what an income tax return is. Through research, role-play, and creating a Government PSA, students will connect taxes to real-world impacts on their families and communities.