Session 1: The Money Machine
A company is a machine: things go in, something comes out, money comes back. And an AI can sound completely certain and still be wrong.
App built that day: Money Machine
New Track · Ages 9–12
Money Smarts with AI
Interest, stocks and index funds — and every session, kids build a small money app with AI to prove they understood the idea.
Biweekly online sessions beginning Spring 2027, taught in English. Each 75-minute class starts with a 30-minute lecture, followed by 45 minutes of vibe coding. Pretend money only. No coding experience needed.
Spring 2027Biweekly · 75 minOnlineTaught in English30 min lecture + 45 min vibe codingAges 9–12Pretend money only
Spring 2027
Interest List
Biweekly
Class Schedule
75
Minutes per Session
14
Apps You Keep
The Track
Learn how money works. Then build the thing that does it.
Kids work out a compound interest table with a pencil. Then they describe a calculator in plain English and the AI builds it. Then the app and the paper disagree — and hunting that bug is where the idea finally lands.
Paper before pixels
Every idea is worked out by hand first. The worksheet becomes the test the app has to pass, which is why kids can tell when the computer is wrong.
An app every session
Fourteen small apps, each one built during a 45-minute vibe-coding lab. The later ones reuse the earlier ones — their code compounds too.
The AI is a coach, not an oracle
It gets facts wrong, it gets arithmetic wrong, and it writes buggy code. Catching those mistakes is celebrated and discussed together online.
What you'll learn
- Saving, spending and opportunity cost
- Simple interest — rent for money
- Compound interest, and why year two grows more
- Borrowing, debt and runaway fees
- What a stock actually is
- What an index fund actually is
- Vibe-coding your own apps with AI
- Fact-checking real sources
- Building and defending a pretend portfolio
- Pitching an idea to families online
What you'll finish with
14 mini-apps you built
Practice mini-apps vibe-coded with AI during the online class.
A company case file
Three sessions of research on one real public company, with sources and dates the kid checked.
A pretend portfolio journal
Pretend money split three ways, with a written reason defending every choice.
The My Money Plan capstone
A two-minute pitch app, driven by the kid, presented at the family showcase.
How a 75-minute online session runs
Taught in English: the first 30 minutes are lecture, then the remaining 45 minutes are vibe coding.
30 minLectureLearn the session’s money idea in English with examples and guided practice
45 minVibe codingBuild the session’s app with AI, then test it against the lesson examples
A broken app still demos. The student shows it, says what it was meant to do and names the bug — and that counts fully.
14 Sessions + Showcase
The curriculum
Eight units, one money idea at a time, each one ending in something the kids got a computer to do.
Unit 1 · Money Foundations
Session 2: Cost, Price, Leftover
B1 Money WordsThe difference between what something costs to make and what it sells for, what is left over, and what you gave up by choosing.
App built that day: Leftover Calculator
Unit 2 · How Money Grows
Session 3: Simple Interest: Rent for Money
Interest is rent for money. Build the table by hand and see why every year adds the same amount.
App built that day: Interest Table Maker
Session 4: Compound Interest: Interest on Interest
B2 Interest ExplainerWhy year two grows more than year one, why waiting longer matters more than starting big, and a gentle look at prices rising over many years.
App built that day: Snowball Compounder
Unit 3 · Borrowing & Debt
Session 5: Borrow Smart, Borrow Careful
B3 Borrow SmartTwo good reasons people borrow, why paying back is always bigger, what makes fees run away, and credit versus debit. Every story is about pretend characters and pretend shops.
App built that day: Runaway Fee Simulator
Unit 4 · What Is a Stock?
Session 6: A Tiny Piece of a Real Company
What a share is — and what it definitely is not. Nobody gets to walk into a store and take things.
App built that day: Pizza Slice Explorer
Session 7: Stock vs. Savings
B4 Stock vs SavingsSmall and promised next to bouncy and not promised, compared honestly in both directions. Neither one is "the good one."
App built that day: Two Envelopes
Unit 5 · Company Detective Project
Session 8: Open the Case File
Pick one well-known public company and work out what it sells, who uses it, and who actually pays — which is often not the same person.
App built that day: Who Pays? Sorter
Session 9: The Money Engine, Verified
Explain your company in three sentences, then back two facts with a source and a date you found yourself.
App built that day: Engine Explainer
Session 10: Rival, and What One Slice Means
B5 Company BriefCompare your company with a rival fairly — including the row where your company loses — and say what owning one slice of it would actually mean.
App built that day: Head-to-Head Card
Unit 6 · Index Funds & Baskets
Session 11: The Basket: A Tiny Piece of Many Companies
What people mean by a fund that follows a long list of big companies, in kid words, with no product or provider named.
App built that day: Basket Builder
Session 12: One Company or the Whole Basket?
B6 Index vs One StockThe honest trade. A basket brings fewer surprises from any one company — and you give something up for that. Fewer surprises is not the same as safe.
App built that day: Stress Test Machine
Unit 7 · Pretend Portfolio
Session 13: Three Sleeves, Defended
B7 Portfolio + JournalSplit a pretend $1,000 across savings, one company, and a basket — and write a real reason for every single choice. Nobody wins; there is no scoreboard.
App built that day: Three-Sleeve Board
Unit 8 · Capstone
Session 14: Pitch Lab
B8 PitchTwo minutes, no reading off a page, driving your own app — with your verdict clearly stamped as an opinion.
App built that day: My Money Plan
Finale
Family Showcase
A 90-minute online evening: students share their apps, give their two-minute My Money Plan pitches, revisit fourteen sessions of AI mistakes they caught, and receive their badges. The not-investment-advice statement is read aloud at the start.
The fourteen apps
Students describe and vibe-code each practice mini-app with AI. They all carry the same banner on screen: pretend money — practice numbers only.
Session 1
Money Machine
Press the button to sell one thing you make and watch "money in" climb.
Session 2
Leftover Calculator
Price, cost and how many sold go in; money in, money out and the leftover come out.
Session 3
Interest Table Maker
Prints a year-by-year table where the same amount of interest arrives every year.
Session 4
Snowball Compounder
Simple and compound side by side, so the gap opens up in front of you.
Session 5
Runaway Fee Simulator
A pretend fee repeats every "two weeks" until the fees pass what was borrowed.
Session 6
Pizza Slice Explorer
Slice the pizza, hold one slice, and see what that does and does not let you do.
Session 7
Two Envelopes
A savings envelope and a share envelope, moved by pretend wiggles the kids typed in.
Session 8
Who Pays? Sorter
Tag who uses each product and who pays for it, and the app flags every mismatch.
Session 9
Engine Explainer
A three-screen explainer with a Verified badge that only lights once sources are checked.
Session 10
Head-to-Head Card
Five rows comparing your company to a rival, including the row where yours loses.
Session 11
Basket Builder
Add companies and a pretend amount splits equally into crumbs across all of them.
Session 12
Stress Test Machine
Draw a pretend event card and count how many of twelve companies it hits.
Session 13
Three-Sleeve Board
A pretend $1,000 across three sleeves; no sleeve locks without a typed reason.
Session 14
My Money Plan
A seven-screen pitch app that opens the earlier apps as live demos, ending on an OPINION stamp.
Kids will use Google AI Studio or similar tools; the final tools are still to be decided. Parents or adults supervise access on each kid's own laptop, with no child accounts.
For Parents
Our promise to parents
This is a financial-literacy and AI-literacy class for children. It is education, not advice — and the guardrails are built into how the class runs, not just into what we say.
- Pretend money only, with round practice numbers that are obviously not real
- No brokerage or trading account, no simulated-trading platform, no signups
- No live prices, tickers or market data anywhere — including inside the apps
- No price predictions by anyone: not kids, not facilitators, not the AI, not an app
- No specific fund, bank, lender or card is ever named or recommended
- No crypto, no betting, no shorting, no leverage, no get-rich framing, no leaderboard
- Family finances are never discussed; debt stories use fictional characters only
- Practice apps use pretend numbers only, with no live prices, market data or personal information
- Each student codes independently on their own laptop under parent or adult supervision
- Kids are taught to label their own conclusions as opinions, never as advice
The statement we share with every parent
Money Smarts with AI is a financial-literacy and AI-literacy education program for children. It is not investment advice, and nothing in it is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any security, fund, or financial product. Students learn how interest, borrowing, stocks, and index funds work using pretend money and round, deliberately unrealistic practice numbers. We never name or recommend specific funds, banks, or lenders. Students research publicly available information about well-known public companies and build pretend paper portfolios. No real money, brokerage account, or trading platform is used at any point. We do not teach, model, or permit price prediction. Students also vibe-code small practice apps with AI on their own laptops under parent or adult supervision. The class may use Google AI Studio or similar tools; final tools are still to be decided. The apps use no live prices or market data, and students do not create child accounts or enter personal or financial information.
The eight Money Lab rules
These are the rules students follow throughout every online session.
- We use pretend money. Always.
- Nobody can know what a price will do. Not us. Not the AI. Not the news.
- The AI is a coach, not an answer key — and it is bad at math and writes buggy code. We check it.
- Our practice apps use pretend numbers only — no live prices or market data.
- No real names in our apps. Not ours, not anyone’s.
- We only use public information about companies.
- We never talk about our family’s money.
- Our verdict is an opinion. Opinions are great. Opinions are not advice.
Class details
Logistics
Ages9 – 12
Curriculum14 sessions + showcase
SessionBiweekly · 75 min
FormatOnline
LanguageEnglish
Structure30 min lecture + 45 min vibe coding
LevelBeginner
ScheduleSpring 2027
Class costFree
What you need
- Your own laptop for coding independently during the online class
- A kid who can read at about grade 3, add and multiply small numbers, and find letters on a keyboard
- No coding experience and no maths beyond a times table
- A willingness to argue with a computer politely and check its homework
Nice to have first
AI Basics for Kids is the natural feeder, but the first session covers the essentials for anyone arriving fresh.
Where this track sits
Money Smarts graduates arrive at Coding with AI having shipped fourteen small apps and debugged AI-written code. It is the gentlest on-ramp to building software we run, because nobody is asked to learn syntax first.
Frequently Asked Questions
Spring 2027
Join the Money Smarts interest list
Tell us who is interested and we'll share enrollment details when they are ready. This is an interest list, not enrollment.