Bank Jr. is an educational banking website designed for elementary school students. I discovered Bank Jr. through Donna Murray’s excellent blog. Bank Jr. is an interactive website on which students can learn the in’s and out’s of banking. Bank Jr. has a glossary of terms, a help center, and savings wizards. Bank Jr. also provides students with a history of money and a look at how different countries use money. The teachers section of Bank Jr. provides an extensive glossary of terms and some lesson ideas. Bank Jr. does not provide full-length, detailed lesson plans, but it does provide PDF’s of worksheets and handouts that teachers may find useful for teaching banking lessons.

Yesterday, Common Craft released a new video that explains borrowing money in plain English. As always, Common Craft does an excellent job of explaining what can be a complex topic in a very easy to understand form. The video is embedded below in Dot Sub form.

Applications for Education
Bank Jr. could be a good place for students to learn about saving money and commonly used banking terms. In the teacher section of Bank Jr. teachers can find PDF forms for teaching banking basics like keeping an accurate ledger.

The Common Craft video should be required viewing for high school and college students. Too many students get to college and get into debt in part because of ignorance about the pitfalls of borrowing more than you can afford to repay.

Here are a couple of other resources for teaching about banking and economics.
The History of Credit Cards in the United States
Saving Money in Plain English