Courses · Business & Finance · Kindergarten to Grade 12
Business & Finance
Where did money come from, and why is a paper dollar worth anything? What made the great businesses of history great, and for whom? Each lesson starts with a real moment from history, from Croesus’s gold coins and the Medici Bank to Ford’s assembly line and the Buttonwood tree. It takes the story apart to see what people had to learn, explains the big idea, and then has the student trade, count, price, sell, keep the books and save at home.
Choose a grade
Ages 5–6
Kindergarten
Work and helping, trading before money, the farmers’ market, who makes our bread, honest scales, a lemonade stand plan, counting coins, and the save, spend and give jars.
Ages 6–7
Grade 1
Producers and consumers, salt and shells, why strawberries cost more in January, Wanamaker’s price tags, Ford’s car for everyone, making change, and the widow’s two mites.
Ages 7–8
Grade 2
Who makes a pencil, Abraham weighs silver, the U.S. Mint, two lemonade stands, Hudson’s Bay trading posts, Hershey’s town, a first ledger page, and giving cheerfully.
Ages 8–9
Grade 3
Adam Smith’s pin factory, goldsmiths and paper receipts, medieval fairs and guilds, the Medici, the Sears catalog, Lord Shaftesbury, the Wrights’ bicycle shop, and Pacioli’s Venice.
Ages 9–10
Grade 4
The Silk Road and the Hanseatic League, Mansa Musa’s gold, “not worth a Continental,” the Erie Canal, Wedgwood, Lincoln on patents, Edison’s invention factory, and the Buttonwood tree.
Ages 10–11
Grade 5
From barter to gold to the fiat dollar, supply and demand, monopolies and guilds, the Medici Bank, Ford’s $5 day, Hershey’s school, child-labor laws, double-entry bookkeeping, and Franklin’s 200-year gift.
Ages 11–12
Grade 6
Arkwright’s mill, the price revolution, the four market structures, Boulton & Watt, Toyota’s production system, the Factory Acts, debits and credits, and compound interest.
Ages 12–13
Grade 7
The Wealth of Nations, the Bank of Amsterdam, Bretton Woods, Carnegie Steel and Standard Oil, the Homestead strike and the $5 day, T-accounts, the 1929 crash and the FDIC.
Ages 13–14
Grade 8
I, Pencil, how banks create money, the 1971 Nixon shock and hyperinflation, antitrust from Standard Oil to AT&T, LEGO’s turnaround, the SEC, Enron and audits, and a capstone pitch.
High school
Grades 9–12
Economics & the History of Money
From weighed silver to the fiat dollar: markets and prices, market structures, money and banking, the gold standard, central banks, inflation, trade, and labor, capital and fair rules, through real history.
Grades 10–12
Accounting
Pacioli’s double entry to modern statements: journals and ledgers, the accounting cycle, the income statement, balance sheet and cash flow, payroll, cost accounting, audits and ethics.
Grades 9–12
Entrepreneurship & Sales
Finding a need, testing an idea, business plans and financing, marketing, honest selling and negotiation, operations, and a real venture with a pitch, judged by its stakeholders.
Grades 9–12
Personal Finance & Investing
Work and income, budgeting, saving and giving, banking, credit and debt, insurance, taxes, stocks, bonds and index funds, buying a car or a home, and a lifetime of stewardship.
Grades 9–12 · Job pathway
The Online Entrepreneur
A job pathway for the student who wants to sell something real online: product selection, copywriting, online marketing, honest advertising and distribution, with contests to enter, real teen-founder stories, the classic masters and today’s teachers, and the jobs this trade leads to.
Grades 9–12 · Job pathway
Real Estate: Agent & Investor
A job pathway into the real estate trade from both doors — the licensed agent and the property investor: the deal math, licensing in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Alaska, what a student can legally do before 18, real young-investor stories, honest teachers, a four-year plan and the jobs at the end.
Grades 11–12 · Job pathway
Real Estate License Exam Prep: The National Exam
A full-year course that teaches the national portion every state’s real estate licensing exam shares — property and legal descriptions, ownership, land use, valuation, financing, title and closing, contracts, agency, fair housing and real estate math — built on the PSI and Pearson VUE outlines, ending with a full-length 100-question practice national exam.
Grades 10–12 · Job pathway
Real Estate Investing: Rentals, House Hacks and Deal Analysis
A full-year course in investing in single-family homes and small multifamily the careful way — markets and comps, rental deal analysis, financing, house hacking, BRRRR, flips, short-term rentals, landlording, taxes and building a portfolio — with the free Deal Analyzer worksheets.
Grades 9–12 · Job pathway
Civil Service & Local Government
A job pathway into public service close to home: how cities, counties, school boards and districts actually run, the budget and levy math, the merit system and how government hiring works, what a student can do before 18 — open meetings, youth councils, cadet programs, Boys and Girls State — real stories of great public servants, a four-year plan and the jobs at the end.
Grades 11–12 · Job pathway
Investment Adviser Exam Prep: Series 65
A job pathway from zero to a full-length practice Series 65, the state exam for investment adviser representatives: the laws born of 1929, bonds, stocks and funds, clients, taxes and portfolios, and the ethics of the fiduciary’s calling, ending with a timed 130-question practice exam.
Grades 11–12 · Job pathway
Insurance Agent Exam Prep: Life, Health, Property & Casualty
A job pathway from zero to a full-length practice state licensing exam — a trade with no college requirement, where many states ask few or no study hours and an adult commonly finishes the road in two to eight weeks: the Great Fire and Lloyd’s coffee house, the strange contract at the heart of it all, life, health, home, auto and commercial policies, the law of the license, and the honest arithmetic of a commission career.
Grades 11–12 · Job pathway
The Notary Public
A job pathway to the oldest desk in the world: the impartial witness. The office and its history from Rome to New Haven, the notarial acts, every state’s road to a commission at 18 for about $100–$300, the honest arithmetic of fees, mobile work and loan signings, and the jobs where the stamp makes a young worker more valuable.
How every lesson works
Each K–8 course is one school year: 8 units of 4 lessons, one lesson a week in two sessions. The same eight subjects return every year, a little deeper each time: work and trade, the story of money, markets, great businesses, workers, owners and fair rules, entrepreneurship and sales, bookkeeping and accounting, and saving, investing and giving.
- Warm-up. A few minutes of noticing, sorting, counting or remembering.
- Watch. A hand-picked YouTube video from a museum, the Federal Reserve, the U.S. Mint or a good teacher, with a note on when to watch it.
- Learn. The story, how they figured it out, the big idea, and how it works in business today, in short sections a parent can read aloud.
- Picture study. A public-domain painting, photograph or document, such as Matsys’s Moneylender and His Wife, Rembrandt’s Syndics of the Drapers’ Guild or an early ledger, to look at closely and talk about.
- Project. The student does the thing in miniature: a barter game, an assembly-line race, a price survey, a cost sheet, a week of ledger entries or a compound-interest table.
- Ledger notebook. Tallies, ledgers, price tables, budgets, timelines and “what I would change.”
What makes a business great? Every year looks at real businesses through six groups of people with a stake in them: the financiers who lent or invested, the risk-takers who founded and owned them, the builders who designed and made the product, the workers, the customers, and the community. Students learn to see what each business did well and where it fell short.
Fair rules. Students learn how owners and workers need each other. They see how honest weights, contracts, patents, child-labor and safety laws, antitrust and deposit insurance kept that balance, and how rules such as Diocletian’s price edict or printing money backfired. All of it is taught as history and principle, with Scripture on just weights and fair wages. Current political debates are left out.
Each unit ends with a short review and a portfolio project with a simple rubric. In the last week, the family holds a market day. Bonus: Run a Real Business. An optional ninth unit walks the student through planning, making, selling and closing the books on a small business suited to their age, with a parent.
Nothing needs to be bought. Projects use coins, a calculator, a kitchen scale, a notebook and things from around the house. Each unit also lists optional books, games and free classics such as Franklin’s The Way to Wealth.
Every course can also be downloaded as one printable PDF, with the video links printed in each lesson.
Videos open on YouTube. Each one was checked for the lesson and for the content, but YouTube shows its own recommendations and ads around them, so parents should stay nearby.