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History holds many economic lessons. The Great Depression, in particular, is an event that provides the opportunity to teach and learn a great deal about economics-whether you're studying the economic reasons that the Depression took place, the factors that helped it come to an end or the impact on Americans who lived through it. This curriculum is designed to provide teachers with economic lessons that they can share with their students to help them understand this significant experience in U.S. history.

Students listen to the book Uncle Jed’s Barbershop, about an African-American barber who, despite significant setbacks, saves enough money to buy his own barbershop. From the story, students learn about saving, savings goals, opportunity cost, and segregation. The students participate in a card game to further investigate what it takes to reach a savings goal.

Students learn about opportunity cost, saving, savings goals and a savings plan by reading The Pickle Patch Bathtub. Students will develop savings plans that lead to their own savings goals.

Students listen to the book The Goat in the Rug, about a Navajo weaver who uses a number of resources and intermediate goods to make a traditional Navajo rug. Students then play a matching game and make posters to classify the natural resources, human resources, capital resources and intermediate goods used in the story.

Students learn about saving, savings goals, interest, borrowing and opportunity cost by reading Less Than Zero. Students use a number line and a line graph to track spending and borrowing in the story.

Students learn about wants and choices. Working in groups students will prioritize a list of goods in the order of their wants from greatest to least.

In this free lesson, students listen to the story of Ruby and Max, two bunnies that go shopping and make many spending decisions. After a goal-sorting activity, students choose and illustrate their own savings goal.

In this lesson, students hear a story about two little bears whose parents use several figures of speech relating to money. Students draw a picture of a bank and write a caption explaining their illustration. Students follow along with the story by listening for additional figures of speech and how they relate to the concepts of banks and interest. The students also construct a story map of an event in the story relating to why people choose to keep their money in banks.

In this lesson, students make a choice about what they want to eat for dinner, but then they are asked to trade with a partner and discuss whether they like their new dinner better. Based on this discussion, they learn about preferences and how they help us make choices. Students then hear a story about a little bear who looks at many hats to see if he can find a new one he likes. Students will relate key concepts from the lesson to the story and create a hat to discuss their own choices and preferences with the class.

Since 1920, women have more than doubled their share of the labor force. More women are working, but has the type of work they do advanced similarly? What were the top occupations for women 20, 60, and 100 years ago, and how do those occupations compare with women’s choices today? In this lesson, students use primary documents to review historical trends in women’s share of the labor force and chosen occupations. Using Barbie careers as a time line, they speculate as to why Barbie represented certain careers for girls at different points in time since 1959. They choose which career Barbie might represent next year and explain that choice in a one-page essay.