Financial Literacy: My Party Budget- Decimals and Percentages Application

Financial Literacy: My Party Budget- Decimals and Percentages Application

Unlock mathematics’ real-world influence with this practical math project for students in grades 5-8. This tool allows students to sharpen their intermediate math skills, particularly applying percentage calculations and decimal operations to manage a budget consciously - a vital lesson in financial literacy. This versatile resource is ideal for grades 5 to 8 classrooms as well as high school special education environments where budgeting practice complements life skills training.

How to Use:

1. Give each student a party budget. You can choose to give everyone the same budget, OR this is a great way to differentiate. Give students with emerging understanding a budget of $100 (which is easy to work with) and give students who need a challenge a budget such as $240, which will result in more complex calculations. This will also stimulate discussions about budgeting in general and the challenge of planning with less money.

2. Students need to partition their hypothetical party budget across varied cost categories like food, decorations and entertainment by employing basic percent in decimal form and understanding addition and multiplication of decimals. For example, they might decide to spend 50% of their budget on food because that is their favourite part of a party. They will calculate 50% of their total budget. This skill application brings relevance to numbers through experiential learning.

3. You can decide if students should complete calculations by hand or if using a calculator is allowed. Also, a complete sample answer key is included that you can show to your students to demonstrate the task.

4. Finally, students complete shopping research and choose items online or in store flyers. This fosters strategic thinking when managing limited resources. You can have a discussion about making tradeoffs (for example, choosing frozen pizza instead of fresh to have extra money for a party activity OR inviting fewer guests to have more money for party favours per person).

What's Included:

A total of 8 pages in PDF Format

Title Page

Teacher Instructions

3 Page Student Worksheets

3 Page Sample Answer Key