Before money was invented, people used a barter system to trade goods and services directly. Under this system, if a farmer had extra corn but needed meat, he could trade corn directly to another person with extra meat. However, bartering was inefficient as it was difficult to find someone who was willing and able to trade exactly what you needed. People then started using commodities like corn, eggs, or metals as a common medium of exchange that could be traded for any other good, paving the way for the modern money system.

1. Baseball Lesson
Barter v/s Money
Grade 4

2. Blueprint Skill
Recognize the difference
between a barter system
and a money system.

3. Question
If you wanted to purchase some
bread, would you trade the
cashier a loaf of bread for
your shoes?
Of Course, NOT

4. You've probably never thought very
much about money. It is just there.
When you want or need something,
you simply take some money and pay
for it. That wasn't always the way
things were done, before money was
invented people used to swap things.
This was called bartering.

5. Barter
To barter is to exchange goods
without involving money.
(to trade or swap)

6. At first, people used to do direct swaps for
what they needed. Supposing you had a lot
of corn, but no meat, and the farmer down
the road had a lot of meat but no corn. If
that was the case then you could agree on a
fair swap, and swap corn for meat. If you
needed meat, but the farmer already had
corn, he might not want any more corn, he
may want something else, perhaps some
eggs.

7. If you still wanted the meat, you
would have to find someone who had
too many eggs, and wanted some corn.
Of course, this system meant that
people spent all their days trying to
find someone to swap with, and they
weren't able to get anything else
done. That was when people came up
with a better idea.

8. Instead of a direct swap of
one item for another people
came up with the idea of
using one thing to swap for
everything else. This was the
beginning of money.

9. Instead of a direct swap of one item
for another people came up with the
idea of using one thing to swap for
everything else. This was the
beginning of money.

10. Resources
• Franklin Institute
• How Money Began
• History of Money
• Pictures came from Kids Bank