LDS || The Price is Right -- A Fun Budgeting Activity for Activity Days

Hi, guys!  I have been working with the 8-11 year old girls in our church for the past year or so in the Activity Days program.  We meet twice a month for fun activities (hence the name) that teach spiritual lessons, help the girls discover and develop their talents, and provide opportunities to serve others.   I have shared some of the more elaborate activities we have planned, like our Back-to-School Flamingle, and this "Experiment Upon the Word" Science Night.  Not every activity is that fancy, believe me!!  Some nights we just do a small craft or play games.

Earlier this year I was in charge of planning an activity about budgeting.  Yikes!!  How was I going to take a topic that is soooo boring I am not so fond of myself, and make it fun -- and RELEVANT -- for a bunch of active tweens?!  I decided to play The Price is Right to make sure they had an idea about how much common things actually cost.  It was SUPER interesting!!

Send home an invitation/reminder the Sunday before the activity to get the girls excited!  Download my design here and print them 4 to a page.  Just use a black marker to write in the names on the price tags and the info about the activity.

I made the whole game into a PowerPoint presentation, so I could just hook my laptop up to a big TV at church and make the whole thing go really smoothly. For the first game they were shown two products and one price.  They had to choose which product matched the price shown.

 The answer is revealed in the next slide:

We talked a little about shopping sales and using coupons, but I tried not to overwhelm them with information.

After several rounds of that, the next game was Higher or Lower! They were shown a product and a price and had to decide if the actual price of that item was higher or lower than the price shown.

 Again, the answer was revealed in the next slide:

They were actually pretty good at this one!  We played this game for several rounds, and then . . 

It was time for Squeeze Play!!  The girls were shown an item along with several numbers.  They had to decide which number needed to be removed to make the actual price of the the item.

It took some prompting to help them understand this game, but once they got it, they loved it!  I used the actual retail prices I found online or from stores in our area when possible for each item as I was putting the game together.  For a few of the items I had to google the average price and used that.  

You can download my finished Price is Right PowerPoint here.

If you would rather make up your own game using different items and/or prices, here are some resources that may help you:

Download the Price is Right font here for free. I used it to make titles and prices on my slides.

The Price is Right Theme Song is available on YouTube.  I had my tech-savvy teenager help me embed it in my presentation, but I don't remember how we did it.  Sorry!



The yellow name tag template is available here. Print one for each girl on sticker paper to wear like actual contestants.  Put all their names into a bowl and have your host draw one or two for each round and invite them to "Come on Down"!!

The entire Price is Right game actually only took about 30 minutes of our evening, so we also played this awesome game idea from Mormon Activity Days and called it The Game of Life in keeping with our theme for the evening.  It was a more in-depth look at how to budget a salary for common living expenses and gave them some exposure to the options they might have.  I would recommend pairing up one younger girl with one older girl for this game if you have enough girls in your group.  If you don't have enough to make teams, plan for extra time to help the younger gals count out money and do the math. They can absolutely do it, but if you have a big group it may be helpful to have your partner on hand ready to help answer questions!

For treats, you could serve one or two of the food items they learned about in the Price is Right game or this recipe for "Millionaire Bars" from Center Cut Cook would probably also be a big hit!  

The girls had a really fun time and were totally engaged THE WHOLE TIME, which is straight-up miraculous.  I would absolutely do this activity again.  Good Luck, friends!!