The practical details
What it costs, how much time it takes, and what your child walks out able to do.
- Ages
- Grades 5 to 9. No prior economics knowledge needed.
- The program
- 8 sessions, one hour each, running July to October.
- When
- Saturdays at 10 am — but not every Saturday. See the note below.
- Where
- The library at Glen Abbey Community Centre, Oakville, Ontario.
- Time commitment
- One hour a week. No homework, nothing to prepare.
- Cost
- Free for members of the Voice Linking Association (VLA). $10 per session for everyone else.
- Run by
- Mingming Yu and Michael Yang, both Grade 12. A volunteer project, not a business.
- How to join
- Through the WeChat group. Instructions here.
We do not run every Saturday. Scheduling conflicts mean we skip some weeks, so there are gaps in the term. Every session is announced in the WeChat group in advance — that is the only reliable place to find out whether we are on this week.
Beyond the vocabulary
They can read a chart
Demand curves, cost curves, payoff matrices. A student leaves able to look at a real economic diagram and say what it means.
They think in trade‑offs
Once opportunity cost has a name, students start seeing it in their own time and money. Parents usually notice this before the child mentions it.
They can argue a position
Every session ends with teams presenting something they built and defending the reasoning behind it out loud.
They stop being intimidated
Economics hits most students as a wall of vocabulary in grade 11. One who met the circular flow at twelve, in a relay race, walks in comfortable.
Things parents ask
Does my child need to be good at math?
No. Graphs and simple arithmetic, nothing past what a grade 5 student has already met. Economics at this level is reasoning, not calculation.
Grades 5 to 9 is a wide range. Does that work?
It does, because the material is new to everyone — a grade 9 student has no head start on scarcity. Older students often end up explaining an idea to a younger one, which is the best test of whether they understood it.
What if we miss a week?
Not a problem. Every session opens with a recap and covers one idea start to finish. Joining partway through is equally fine.
Is there homework?
None. The only written work is the exit ticket, handed in at the end of the hour. Nothing goes home.
Is this AP preparation?
Not formally, and it does not replace an AP course. The concepts and diagrams are taken from AP Micro and Macro, so a student who does this will find those classes familiar rather than new. That is a side effect, not the goal.
What does it cost?
Free for members of the Voice Linking Association (VLA), and $10 per session for everyone else.
Who is actually teaching?
Mingming Yu and Michael Yang, Grade 12 students who both scored 4 to 5 in AP Microeconomics and Macroeconomics. They are teaching material they have just finished themselves, which is why the sessions use real AP diagrams rather than simplified ones. More about both of them.
What it looks like when it works
Henry kept his paddle down for several rounds of the candy auction — none of them were candies he liked. When his favourite finally came up in the last round he bid for it, and lost. His parent was ready to console him.
Well, at least I didn’t waste my money on candies I didn’t even like. I didn’t get what I wanted in the end, but at least I still have my money.
“In an atmosphere where everyone was caught up in bidding, he held back on things he didn’t truly want. All it took was a bag of candy for him to experience self‑control, judgment and self‑affirmation firsthand. That’s worth so much more than memorising a hundred definitions.”
Still have a question?
The WeChat group is fastest. Email works for anything longer.