A penny race:  This is best done with a whole school, grade levels vying against each other to see which grade brings in the most pennies. It is amazing how pennies add up when you are collecting from a whole school.  This is a good fund raiser for the school, school library, or a club.

Life skills moment:  A teacher purchases small prizes, pencils, or things that her class age group would like.  If it is a younger group of children, he/she can reward the students for good work or behavior with fake coins.  The 'prize store' is opened at regular intervals so that the children can spend their coins.  For older students, ways to earn dollars would be given but the students would have fixed expenses such as desk rental to pay as well as for purchases from a 'prize store'.  Money would have to be managed well in order to pay the fixed expenses and have money left over for other things.  Since this could be developed into a true life experience, P.T.A.s might donate money for pencils, erasers, book covers, or other things to put in the store. 

The home project: Students are given the task of finding out how much money it takes to run their own home.  The things to include are: electricity, heating costs, telephone/cell phone averages, cable/internet/TV, food average, water, etc.  Each student determines how much money it costs to run the home for a year.  Once they have done this, they should answer the question:  What could I do to lower these costs?  This project would make students aware of how much it takes to run a home and that you can affect changes in those costs.  If there is time, have the student pick one item (like water) and work with their family to conserve for a month to see how much money can be saved with water conservation measures. 

A.T.M. quiz