A KS2 budgeting investigation for Y5/Y6. Help Alex plan Olga’s 18th birthday party: £300 budget, with 8 items to choose from.

Alex has been put in charge of organising his sister Olga’s 18th birthday party, and quickly discovers that £300 doesn’t stretch as far as he thought. With eight items on the wish list and a total price tag of £440, pupils work in pairs to decide what to keep and what to cut.

The included bar model cards bring the maths to life: pupils can cut out the cost cards and physically arrange them against the £300 budget strip to test different combinations, making this a genuinely hands-on introduction to budgeting, prioritisation and trade-offs.

Supports the KS2 maths curriculum (addition and subtraction in context) and PSHE financial capability objectives.

This activity is one of hundreds of resources on the Tykeoons primary financial education platform.

This activity is taken from the full Tykeoons lesson on budgeting, which is also available to download free on TES.

This resource contains:

• Scenario page introducing Alex and Olga’s birthday party challenge
• Bar model cut-out cards (8 cost items + £300 budget strip, 2 sets per sheet for paired work)

Discussion prompts:

• Which items are needs and which are wants?
• If you had to cut one more item, which would you choose and why?
• What would you do if the budget increased to £350?