Little Treasures explores the unique perspective young children have towards the value of money and aims to build their capacity as forerunners of a more prosperous and secure future. It provides a framework to empower teachers to build & integrate a variety of activities that can be incorporated within the existing educational curriculum to make children more aware about the intangible concepts of money & wealth, in a social & playful way. These hands on tools can be used and customized by teachers to best suit their subject, the age group of the children and the context of use.

Little Treasures aims to explore fundamental questions about how early childhood experiences can help shape the concepts of money & value. How do children perceive money and what symbolizes value for them? Currently money as a topic is not taught formally but is more of a behavior practice that is inculcated at a young age. The idea was to harness this quality as much as possible and see where it can be taken at a social or community level. Initial research was conducted primarily at individual scale but soon it emerged that children at this age (6-9 year olds) were heavily influenced by what they were taught in schools, by their teachers and experiences with peers. When investigating at how schools deliver knowledge on these bigger topics like money & value it seemed that there was a lot of keen interest but still a gap in the introduction of basic foundation of these holistic & interpersonal learning topics.

Little Treasures was a result of a long iterative design process where multiple experience prototypes for teaching and learning were explored. It was shaped by the students and teachers themselves as the process evolved and was therefore very fluid in nature. This project aimed to enhance the current educational setup by the inclusion of design thinking. The challenge was not about redesigning the learning methodologies but supporting a learning by doing, trans-disciplinary approach that offers creative exchange among students, peers and teachers in a structured yet experimental learning environment.

As someone who was new in the country and belonged to a more consumer based society back home, for me the socialist fabric of Denmark was something quite unique and interesting. It was interesting to see how the mindset of the people was influenced by the systems around them and especially the kind of impact it has on young souls who are in the process of forming opinions and still not clouded by how we as adults understand money. The project was heavily informed in the first few stages by the inputs from children and their community at large while the second phase of the project revolved on how this unique perspective that children have can lend to something that can add meaning to their lives and help shape them as more responsible citizens of the future.

Though the idea was to make children aware about money the extent to which they should be informed was sensitive and soon money turned to larger concepts of wealth and well being. These Little Treasure tools became physical tangible touchpoints which empowered students to embody real world users to not just gain broader understanding on subject matter but incorporate these learnings beyond classroom hours with their friends and at home, making the learning experience more holistic and grounded.

Little Treasures is a body of work that evolved out of a very intense hands-on learning by doing prototyping method which informed key design decisions throughout the process. In a nutshell the first phase of the project was inspired by the unique perspective children have towards money and what can we as adults learn from them while the second phase revolved around on how we as adults can help foster this thinking to build their capacity as forerunners of a more prosperous and secure future.

Research methods used were anchored deeply in individual and group discussions with children (5-10 year olds) and their parents, home visits to see how delicate topics like money were touched upon, visit to flea markets by and for children, shadowing in the market and retail spaces and some discussions with economists and subject matter experts. Considering the sensitivity of the topic and the age group dealt with, a variety of research tools and probes were used like price tagging exercise at homes, valuable and not so valuable stickers, conversation cards, teaching experiments, storytelling and role play etc. A set of 9 intense experience prototyping sessions at Bjørn’s International school with students in standard 1 (6-7 year olds) and standard 3 (8-9 year olds) along with their class teacher and subject teachers provided the backbone of the project. This helped define the age group of the children best suited for what activities, involvement and role of the teacher, teamwork and social dynamics within the classroom, scalability and context of the exercises and how they could be extended outside classroom hours to make the learning more holistic and subject integration within the existing curriculum to best fit the learning process.

A large variety of hands on tools and learning by doing toolkits were created for these experience prototypes such as booklets, forms, exercise leaflets, posters, cheque books, gift tags, auction tags etc that acted as props for different stages within the experience journey. These hands on materials made the learning process more engaging and effective and the teachers and students both looked forward to see what was in store next!

There was a constant iterative loop between all stakeholders and the activity cards and digital layer around the project were developed as a result of a co-design process with the educators. Understanding the levels of engagement of the educational institutes was important in defining the support needed for the service to operate. Throughout the project the iterations developed aimed to be flexible, universal and adaptable so that they can be used in a variety of situations and educational environments.The terminology used, priority of information and the level of fidelity of the goals vs activity in the activity cards was also optimized by the level of flexibility and structure desired by the teachers.

The world is redefining the concept of finance & money everyday. Many parts of the world are gradually exploring the benefits of a welfare society. This project is based on research conducted in Denmark where ‘Socialism’ is an integral part of the economic structure. Collaborative decision making, ownership equity and mutual exchange value define the social fabric of the country & the values of the people in it. The project hints at the value chain where such services or educational initiatives can reform the method and processes used for talking about meta topics and empower young minds to not just grasp the domain knowledge but the essence and value behind it. Experience based learning of these values can therefore be passed on from teachers to students to peers and hence families, communities and the society at large. Therefore the value creation takes place at many levels and lends a new way of looking at money and the idea and value in a more social and humane way. This paradigm shift in the topic and learning approach aims to make students more aware and responsible citizens of the world.

It introduces life long skills and encourages active participation and collaboration through dialogue that inspires not just individuals but also communities at large. It provides the seed of inspiration to develop further broader topics that could benefit from similar hands on learning approach. Future tools could be topical and contextual and could scale for other meta topics that require behavior learning.

The project helps develop a language for offbeat subjects like money, wealth, economy & society as a whole but teach it through experience & a very hands-on almost game based learning approach that makes it really effective & engaging.

The study aimed to explore the nuances of young minds and their outlook towards money and its value and how this can be inculcated as a behavior practice through teaching and social/ community based skills. Since this project was conducted in Denmark the socialist fabric of the country influenced the thinking and this philosophy reinforced the nature of collaborative decision making and mutual sharing of collective benefits. The platform itself is community driven at a certain level and encourages participation to spark interesting conversations among the society.

Since the project is anchored deeply in co-creation and a wide range of experience prototypes were developed within its span, it lays a emphasis on the feedback and communication loop among all participants. Each experiment led to the other and every discussion around was very critical in gaining deeper understanding of what was the way forward.

The strength of ‘Little Treasures’ is that it provides not only a rich array of tools for teachers but also a deeply engaging set of activity challenges for children like banking, value exchange, crowd funding, understanding individual & collective potential wealth that are grounded in the real world concepts of money. It provided a refreshing first step where topics like money which is quite serious in itself developed a more social and humane edge around it. It encouraged a lot of conversation around new types of skills that the children require when they grow up like being adaptable, flexible and empathetic towards multiple points of views other people.

The energy in the classroom that they controlled chaos referred to specific noise geared towards learning goals which shows that learning is going on and at the same time the students are having fun. This excitement that lingered on even after the activity made the learning more effective and extended. Looking at how students are talking, participating and building upon each other to learn & grasp more were good clues for the teachers to know where the child was in their development phase.

The other strong potential was that it creates an opportunity to stir interesting conversations for teachers and discuss newer ways of approaching teaching methods. The teachers felt it not just provides a framework of tools that they can use but an opportunity to enable behavior change and shape daily habits and in turn the social environment around us.