I was working with a group of second graders last week.  The topic was needs vs. wants.  All of my money classes begin with this discussion as knowing the difference is the beginning of effectively managing money.

So when we got to the activity part of the lesson, kids were cutting out pictures from magazines and pasting them on their mini-poster.  The poster was divided into two sections…needs and wants. 

It’s fun for me to walk around the room and talk with them about their choices.  The first few times I did this I noticed that a lot of the girls were cutting out pictures of babies and pasting them on the ‘want’ side.   This was interesting to me on a variety of levels, but taught me to make my instructions more clear:  only cut out things that we use money to buy.

But back to the second graders.  We were wrapping up the activity and I was having kids clean up and get ready to go.  That’s when I noticed the poster of one of the little boys.  Taking up half of his ‘want’ category was a huge bottle of vodka.  Yikes!  After pulling him aside and talking to him about the appropriateness of this we yanked that bottle off. 

Note to self…only use parent and kid magazines.   And always check their posters before leaving.