Skip to main content

Risk or Reward?

Many people invest their money in stocks and are very successful, but there is an element of risk or reward. In this activity, try to build your candy wealth and understand the risks and rewards!

Back to Activity Finder

Plan

  • Do I have the appropriate supplies ready? 
  • Will everyone be able to participate? 
  • Will there be enough candy that everyone will have some in the end?  
  • You should have enough individually wrapped candies to give five to each person and have a pile in the middle. It is probably best to do this activity in small teams. 
  • If you lose all of your candies, what can you do to earn them back? Maybe you have to wait a certain amount of time or answer a trivia question! Agree on how you will earn candies back before starting the activity. 

Do

  • Give everyone 5 candies to start! 
  • If you roll the die and land on a 3-6, you get five more candies. However, if you roll a 1 or 2you lose all your candies.  
  • Try with only losing some candies on a turn, or all on others! Decide if you want to roll or not, and then play with adjusting the odds. Make the risk higher! Will more people not take the opportunity? Try with lower odds too! 

Review

  • What did it feel like to lose all your wealth?  
  • Is it worth it to take risk? 
  • Do you regret any of your choices?  
  • Are you happy with the end results? 
  • Did anyone take no risk at all? 
  • Remember to submit your activities on our Scouts for Sustainability Take Action Map

Materials

Dice 

Candy  

Keep it Simple

Keep it simple by not bringing up the conversation about stocks. This may be confusing or beyond understanding. Instead,  simply explain that sometimes we have to take risks with our money and this is a way of demonstrating those risks.  

For Virtual-This activity can be done virtually simply by using an online dice to roll and using a tally to keep track of wealth. The leader can facilitate taking turns and everyone can still participate. 

Take it Further

For older groups, take it further by beginning to look at the stock market. Each person will pick one stock they are interested in and create a sheet that follows that stock. They can list what it opened at and what it closed at each day and start to compare. Would this be a good risk to take? They can share with each other and discuss what they would buy!