Classroom Economy

Our study of economics is well underway and turning out beautifully!  To be completely truthful, this is a new unit for us in second grade and I was a little bit apprehensive about how it would all work out.  To my happy surprise it's a slamming success!  To kick off our study students learned a lot of important vocabulary words such as goods, services, consumers, producers, wants, needs, supply, demand, and opportunity cost.

Then to make the unit come to life we decided to make a classroom economy.  Students have been busy working in groups to develop a company name, a good, or a service to sell, a slogan, a logo, a commercial, a store front, and of course their product.  So much fun and learning!  I loved hearing what Lucas had to say after taking orders for The MATES School Supply Depot.  "I noticed that most of the consumers want bookmarks, so I think we should raise the price on bookmarks, and mark the name tags on sale." Supply and demand in action!  Love it!

The kiddos have been earning tickets for hard work and good behavior in class.  The tickets are then used to purchase products from classmate's stores.  I'm thinking of charging rent before our next store so they can get a little taste of how expenses play a role in spending and saving.

Here is a little flip of our first classroom economy and a few videos of the kids in action!