Nitshill Primary School

The whole school embarked on this enterprising project. All children, staff and parents found it to be enjoyable, worthwhile, productive and informative. 
Halfway through the week some P6 children asked, 'Are we not getting any maths this week?' 

Their teacher was not surprised to learn that the children thought that maths was Heinemann and Heinemann alone. It seems that children really don’t put the maths we teach into real-life contexts and more often than not in school we do not teach maths within a real-life context.
At the end of the week we celebrated by inviting parents to join the classes for tea and snacks and to see the work the children had been doing all week and hear about it from the children themselves. We had a fantastic turnout of parents and they thoroughly enjoyed the children’s enthusiastic presentations. One P7 child said, 'That was great, I wish we could do Money Week every week!'
There follows a short summary of the activities each class embarked on and a selection of photographs.

Primary 1/2

This class worked on the activities on pages 14-15 of the Money Week resource - 'Pound Shop'.
They set up a shop in class and sold things for £1. They did lots of counting activities involving working with pound coins.
They made cakes and sandwiches and then sold them, with cups of tea, to parents at their café. They charged £1 entrance fee.
Profits were donated to charity.

Primary 3/4/5

This class worked on the activities on pages 18-19 of 'Money Week' - 'Jam Jar'.
They concentrated on saving money and raising money for charity.  They made fabulous money boxes. They organised a 'Bring and Buy' sale and raised a lot of money for Guide Dogs for the Blind.

Primary 6/7

This class worked on activities on pages 24-25 of 'Money Week' - 'Cost of Living'.
They also worked on activities related to the short stories in 'On the Money' and indeed had an entertaining visit from Jonathan Meres, one of the authors who contributed to the book.
They also changed their group point system for the week by turning points into money. Instead of giving 50 points, the teacher awarded 50p. The children earned points/money to buy minutes of Fun Time as a treat for their group at the end of Money Week. They absolutely loved this and worked out that they would need to earn at least £40 if they wanted an hour and a half of Fun Time!
The teacher set them a Fun Time Challenge, which was to make up a menu for the Fun Time afternoon. They had to cater for 50 people and work within a £25 budget. They used a supermarket website for research and then voted for their favourite menu. The chosen group went shopping after school to buy all the necessary items. It was great to watch them add up as they went along because they were terrified they wouldn’t have enough money to cover the cost of the goods when they reached the checkout! 
Lots of parents supported the class and the children had fun telling their families what they had been up to. They had a display of work and photos to show them too. Everyone enjoyed the snacks!