DVD

Explores how ancient banks functioned, emphasizes the important role that banks play in communities, and visits a bank to show how loans, interest, and bank transactions work. Discusses the system of exchange, presents the Federal Reserve Bank, tours a vault, and explains how banks secure and insure our money.

Illustrates how engravings are made for U.S. dollars, how money is tested for durability, and how money is recycled regularly. Visits government offices to show the steps of making money, identifies the denominations of bills and coins, and follows money from design to production to banks to consumer.

Explores the basic concepts of economics and viewers will learn about how people play an important role as both consumers and producers. Also discusses wants and needs, goods and services, and scarcity and demand.

Discusses how natural resources in different regions of the United States have started different industries - and how dozens of business have been created within those industries. Examines the free market economy, domestic and international trade, and how people use both to satisfy their wants and needs.

Discover the truth about money, its history and how the use of money through saving, spending, earning and investing is the backbone of our economy. Learn how hard work, budgeting, and good decision-making are the keys to be able to buy the things you need and want.

Got a great idea? So do Chloe, Andy, Mia, and Jamaal. Join them as the go from eating a cookie to starting their own cookie business. Discover how market research and a business plan can help you own and operate a business in your community.

From fiction to nonfiction, short stories to poems to memoirs, creative and narrative writing often stem from writers' imaginations or personal interests, weaving together believable characters, settings, and plots.

Presents the basics of expository writing, from composing the introduction and the thesis statement to assembling body paragraphs to writing an effective conclusion.

Writers, ranging from a sportswriter for a school newspaper to a student working on a research project, demonstrate the processes of developing a focused thesis statement as well as structuring and writing solid introductory, supporting and concluding paragraphs.

This program suggests strategies to help discern the appropriate tone for a piece of writing based on purpose and audience. Student writers, ranging from an avid cyclist on a fundraising campaign for an upcoming school trip to a writer communicating with her fellow club members on the Internet, use formal and informal writing to accomplish their task.

In this program, a young writer must compose a convincing letter to the school news paper to win his classmates' votes for student council, while another writer is challenged to research and write a supporting argument in favor of an issue that she feels strongly against.

What are the ingredients of a tall tale? Like any story, a tall tale includes characters, a setting, a problem and a solution. But in a tall tale, ordinary characters -- whether fictional or based on real people or occupations -- may face extraordinary challenges and prevail with outlandish solutions, or may conquer ordinary problems in inventive ways.

Meet Pecos Bill. Raised by coyotes in dusty Texas, he grew up to be the roughest, toughest cowboy who ever lived. Whether riding a tornado, inventing the original cowboy song or conquering a gang of outlaw cowboys, Pecos Bill is a man of many talents.

Meet John Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed. Living in harmony with nature, he fulfills his dream of traveling west to plant apple orchards across the frontier to aid pioneers on their arduous journeys.

Meet Davy Crockett -- a legendary hunter, politician and avid storyteller who tames the wild frontier with sharpshooting, cleverness and plenty of humor. Battling bears and panthers, dislodging the sun from between two icebergs and whipping a destructive comet back into space are all in a day's work for Davy.