Today, employees from Wells Fargo came into all of the first grade classrooms here at Cracker Trail Elementary. Volunteer Donna Lyons and co-workers set their "banking hats" aside today and tried "teaching on for size." Brave souls! They came equipped with Junior Achievement materials to educate students for two hours about entrepreneurship, work readiness, and financial literacy through highly engaging experiential, hands-on activities.
During the first activity students discovered how families are alike and different and how they work together to make where they live a better place. Students worked on completing a Picture Book with colorful stickers of neighborhood scenes and filled in blanks to complete the story.
Next the students learned to differentiate between Needs and Wants through discussion and a game. Ms. Lyons held up a picture card and students responded by holding up a Need or Want card, once they determined if the item pictured was a Need or Want. Then the students wrote a letter to someone in their family asking for something they need or want and explained why they needed or wanted it.
For the third activity students had to solve riddles about jobs and make a poster of themselves doing a job at home. Sorry no pictures of this activity.
During the fourth activity students learned about businesses in neighborhoods. They learned how to read a map key and identified entrepreneurial businesses , along with the goods and services these businesses provide.
Our class ran out of time for the final activity about becoming entrepreneuars and the possibility of students starting their own businesses one day. However, Ms. Lyons left the activity materials so we can work on this later.
At the end of the program students learned about the importance of earning a diploma. Then Ms. Lyons presented each student with a Junior Achievement Certificate of participation and a gift of a Wells Fargo stuffed horse. You can only begin to imagine the expressions on students' faces when they received these beautiful huggable stuffed toys.
Thank-you Wells Fargo for the generous gifts of employee time, memorable activities and for putting smiles on students' faces with adorable BIG brown ponies.
