The Program
One method, thirteen years of it.
“Engaging” is a claim every publisher makes. Here is the mechanism instead: named tools in the early years, rules students derive for themselves in the later ones, and one spiral design connecting a six-year-old's four jars to a seventeen-year-old's yield curve.
The tools
Four tools, taught by name.
The four jars: Earn, Save, Spend, Share
From the first grade, every coin a child touches gets a job in one of four jars. Always four — sharing is not an afterthought. In later grades the jars grow up into four paper envelopes, and the habit becomes a budget.
Hot Brain / Cool Brain
Six-year-olds cannot manage “impulse control”, but they can spot a hot feeling and reach for a cool-down tool. The programme gives self-control a child-sized vocabulary in Grade 1 and uses it all the way to advertising analysis in Grade 5.
The waiting thread
Delayed gratification is the quiet spine of the series: saving goals, the three-day rule before bigger purchases, goal ladders, and plans that survive temptation. Each grade adds one more rung.
The age ladder
Vlad is seven in Grade 1 and eleven in Grade 5. Sentence length, story complexity and the money ideas themselves grow with him — across the four picture-book volumes the text grows from about 1,380 to about 2,035 words, and by Grade 5 students graduate from being read to, to investigating cases in a write-in study book. From Grade 7 the storybook hands over to the real world — and the ladder keeps climbing all the way to Grade 12's capstone plan.
The mechanism
From story page to playground behaviour.
Every concept in the programme travels the same road. Here is the Grade 1 version of it:
- A concept — money is earned in exchange for real work.
- Becomes a scene — Vlad sweeps the workshop for Papá Héctor and earns his first coins. Children feel the earning before anyone defines it.
- Becomes an activity — the teacher guide turns the scene into a classroom four-jar exercise with classroom play coins.
- Becomes a habit — “which jar does it go in?” is a question children start asking without being prompted. That question is the product.
Upper primary
Grade 5–6: from listening to investigating.
Upper-primary students do not want another picture book — so they do not get one. Grade 5 is a 58-page write-in study book built as four cases: each unit opens with a story episode, teaches the ideas directly (key terms, worked examples), then puts them to work in numbered exercises the student completes in the book.
Grade 6 is a complete teaching unit — story, teacher guide, worksheets, projectable slides and a full assessment pack — closing primary with the systems behind banks and cards.
The upper years
Derive, don’t assert.
From Grade 7 the method changes gear. Older students don’t need a hero to trust — they need rules they’ve earned. So nothing important arrives as an announcement: students derive why bond prices fall when rates rise before anyone names the rule; they sort winner-and-loser cards under a weaker peso before anyone defines depreciation; they vote on a prediction before the reveal, and then argue with their own vote.
Mechanism, never forecasting.
The upper program has one iron discipline: it teaches how the machine works — the direction of effects, the chain from a central-bank decision to a household loan payment — and it never predicts markets. Our capstone rubrics award marks for naming what the data cannot tell you, and remove them for forecasts. Schools tell us what they want is judgment, not stock tips; that is exactly what this trains.
The spiral
Every upper-years unit stands on a named earlier step: the Grade 9 exchange-rate unit leans on Grade 5's advertising literacy when it dissects emotional headlines; the Grades 11–12 bond unit assumes Grade 9 and reaches back to Grade 6's picture of what a bank does. Adopt the whole arc and the spiral works automatically; adopt one stage and each unit still carries what it needs.
Curriculum fit
Built to slot into your program.
Primary books are booklist items: one book per student per grade per year, taught in the hours your school already gives to values, life skills or social studies. Secondary and high-school units are teacher-led classroom courses that fit economics, social science or advisory periods. No platform, no devices, no timetable surgery.
The sequence follows recognised financial-education themes for primary years — earning, saving, spending decisions, budgeting, advertising literacy, and banking — so coordinators can map each grade to their existing framework. For Mexican schools, each grade aligns with the corresponding CONDUSEF financial-education theme (alignment, not endorsement — details for Mexican schools here).
English-language editions make the series a natural fit for bilingual and international programmes: real financial vocabulary, in English, at exactly the right reading level for each grade.
Judge the pages, not the pitch.
The sample pack includes full spreads from every grade and a complete teacher guide.
Request a sample pack