For Teachers

Money Activities & Games for 5th Graders

Here are fun and educational money activities and games you can play with your 5th grade students.

teacher-fifth-grade

5th grade is an exciting time for kids and an excellent opportunity for educators to prepare them for the next level. Students should understand credit, debit, budgets, investing, taxes, supply and demand, and competition in this grade level. They can grasp more advanced math concepts, making it an ideal time for teachers to expand their money education. Head over to our 5th grade money lesson plans page to download all the core lesson plans you need for your 5th-grade curriculum.

Games and activities that revolve around money are excellent tools to use in your classroom or homeschooling setup, and you can find many out there today. In the list below, you will notice online games that capture kids’ attention while solidifying financial concepts, and hands-on activities and worksheets that focus on strengthening the skills they need for financial success.

Online Games

Many of today’s 5th-graders are tech-savvy and enjoy playing video games. Teachers can use these factors to their advantage by finding fun and educational games that have kids practice vital money skills. 

Cash Out

This customizable game is perfect for 5th-graders, as it requires them to use the math tools they used during this year to solve real financial problems. The goal is to give the correct change in a high-pressure retail setting within a time frame, making it a hit for many young students, and it ties in math skills with economics nicely. 

Coffee Shop

Teachers won’t need to feel any guilt about their students being glued to the screen with this game, as it involves essential money concepts like profit, pricing, and advertising. Students take on the role of a coffee shop owner, set prices, and see how customers react to specific drinks and costs, allowing them to start thinking like an entrepreneur.

Lemonade Stand

Some 5th-graders may have had the chance to set up and sell lemonade on the side of the road, but this game opens it up to everyone – without having to squeeze the lemons, make signs, and set up your stand. Kids face a slew of factors that will affect sales – such as weather, ingredients, recipes, and customer satisfaction – and have to adjust their approach to maximize profits and sell as much as they can in a limited time frame.

Farm Stand Math

This game is ideal if you need an activity that boosts your students’ multiplication and addition skills while exposing them to simple economics. Students need to add or multiply as fast as they can, figuring out how much a specific number of farm products would cost.

Clara Fraction’s Ice Cream Shop

Your 5th-grade students likely need reinforcement in several math areas, including fractions, which this fun game provides. Your learners need to sell ice cream, and fast, but need to convert improper fractions to mixed numbers and determine how many cones they can sell in five minutes. 

Lemonade Larry

Lemonade stands are one of the primary ways young people can make money, so you can find various games that use this theme to teach about earning income. Kids pretend to be Lemonade Larry, adjusting prices to optimize sales and encouraging creative thinking to maximize profits.

Let’s Go Shopping

Kids of all ages can benefit from practicing rounding, and this game reinforces that skill through real-life examples from stores. Students will see various items with prices attached, and they have to round up or down to the nearest dollar, just as adults do in the store.

Lunch Lady

Try out this fun game with kids speeding through addition and make sure the lunch lady gets students their lunches on time. Your learners need to total up the various items on each tray within a specified time period, putting positive pressure on them while improving their speed and arithmetic.

Money Game

Your students will enjoy playing this interactive activity, which requires them to use different operations to find the correct money solution. They also need to understand various denominations as they quickly click through the other currencies to get to the correct total, making this a comprehensive assessment and practice tool for your students.

Maths Chase

Spending, saving, and budgeting become easier for kids when they have speed and automaticity in their calculations, and this game offers that skill-building aspect. They play a rapid-fire game that keeps them on their toes, learning and reinforcing addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division skills they will need for money management in the future.

Puppy Chase

In this engaging, interactive game, students’ main job is to convert fractions to decimals, which can apply to many money aspects you teach in class, including discount sale prices and dollars and cents. They choose puppies worth specific values, race around the track, and try to get to the finish line first.

Add and Subtract Money: Up to $10,000

In this challenging game, students need to add and subtract larger numbers in short time frames. By having kids work with larger amounts, teachers can give them practice with decimals, place value, and more, making this a worthwhile activity for downtime or enrichment opportunities. 

Consumer Math: Unit Prices

As kids grow up and become more sophisticated shoppers, they will understand how to find unit prices and calculate the per-cost item in a set. This game tests them in various realistic scenarios; for example, they may have to figure out how much one apple costs if a dozen of them cost $5.00. 

Price Lists

This game presents students with a list of items with prices attached, and they have to decide how much two or three of the things cost in total. This approach is effective because it lets kids practice their addition speed and makes them quickly differentiate between various items, helping them in real-life situations they may encounter in the store.

Hands-On Activities

While online games and websites are great, sometimes you prefer your students to work with hands-on activities and worksheets to strengthen their learning. These exercises are sure to be a hit for educators and students alike.

Sales Tax Activity

As your fifth-grade students learn about sales tax, it can be helpful to see real-life applications of this concept. Your learners can work with this exercise at any time, either to supplement your lesson or during independent practice.

In the Party

This worksheet combines fun foods and prices, asking students to use multiplication and addition to find the costs of various items. Whether you want to have students work alone or in pairs, you will like that the sheet has manageable yet realistic word problems, requiring kids to comprehend what they read and total their numbers correctly.

Online Shopping

Your 5th-graders have grown up seeing or hearing about online shopping, making this activity current and practical. Students will notice various products for sale, and they have to figure out how much items will cost in total, giving them hands-on experience with shopping online.

Place an Order

This sheet is similar to the online shopping version, as it sets up scenarios where kids place orders online, but there are new and different problems to solve. These sheets also come with a challenge question to kick in higher-level thinking and cause students to get creative in their problem-solving approaches.

Commission

Students in 5th grade learn about the types of income and styles in which you can receive pay: salary, tips, gig positions, and commission. This activity has kids look closely at the commission and calculate various problems that involve percentages and commissions, building the base for future learning about this topic.

Price Per Unit Activity

Your students will benefit from understanding the concept of price per unit, which you likely will cover in your 5th-grade curriculum, and this worksheet will hammer your points home. They need to solve problems involving individual items in a package, which is an excellent skill to have in the store when they try to determine the best deal available to them.

Tips Activity

Tips are another form of payment, a way to make a living or supplement your other income streams, and many students may show interest in careers where tipping is the primary payment method. This activity describes scenarios where kids need to solve math problems involving tips, like how much money someone would get with a 10% tip on a $50 restaurant bill or other real-life situations.

Snowboard Shopping

This worksheet will make learning fun for your students, as they need to find the costs of snowboarding-related items and put them on a list. As a challenge, they also need to total up three or more items, expanding their addition skills and helping them understand decimals a bit better.

Theme Park Decisions

Kids love going to theme parks, so this worksheet is a perfect fit for your money education supplementary materials. You tell the students they have a pre-set budget, and they have to stay within it as they pick and choose which activities to do if they had free reign at a theme park.

About the Author

Peter Brown

Peter Brown is a National Board Certified teacher with over two decades of experience in the classroom. He loves working with students of all ages in many subjects, but particularly in practical areas like money education, to help kids achieve their goals. When he is not teaching or writing about financial literacy, you can find him surfing, hiking, skiing, or traveling to new places.

Last updated on: September 4, 2023