A great way for your students to practice addition, multiplication, subtraction, and even percentage skills. A fun application for Common Core Math, especially in the area of Number Sense and Place Value.
I use this project every year in my classroom and the students loved it. After practicing on how to write checks, students can make their own checkbooks and begin the Checkbook activity. Usually, I give them a worksheet each that contains expenses, deposits, and withdraws for a week and they must write checks to cover the expenses and balance their funds using the register. At the end of the activity, students that have the correct balance get a small prize. For advanced students, I will ask them to calculate taxes for every purchase to get bonus points. The worksheet I used is included as a sample. :)
You can also apply checkbook skills to other activities in your class that include buying/selling, money transactions, or for credit such as Class Store, Bridge Building project, and other math activities.
This project will enhance and reinforce students' math concepts and the application of math to the real world.