Shopping!

Ten years ago when I first started teaching, I came upon some great resources left behind in the classroom by a previous teacher.  These included the Box It or Bag It Mathematics : Teachers Resource Guide series(Burk, D., Symonds, P., Snider, A., 1988).  A cornerstone activity in this series-- the shopping project--is one that I try to use regularly as well.   A shopping project is the ultimate open-ended activity and it works well for a wide range of learners.  I've used it with just first graders and I've also used it with wider multi-age spans of first- through fourth-graders. 

Here's how it works:

First I collect five or six interesting art elements.  Sometimes these are pieces of construction paper cut into different shapes-- red triangles, blue squares, yellow circles, etc.  Sometimes these are squares of paper, squares of fabric, squares of foil.  I make sure to have lots of each element.  Next, I make price tags for each element--  1 cent, 2 cents, 5 cents, 10 cents, 12 cents.  Lastly, I prepare zippered sandwich baggies full of pretend coins for each student.  I just put in random handfuls of coins so that each child has plenty of money, I don't bother counting it.  

When I introduce the project to the class, I show each material and the price and model the process of developing a piece of artwork and purchasing the different elements.  Here I think aloud as I create a shopping list, pay for the pieces, and arrange them on a base piece of construction paper.  Then I give each child a big piece of construction paper to use as a base, a bag full of money, and a piece of paper for their own shopping list.  I send students off to plan, and as they finish, I open the store for shopping. 

The tricky part is keeping the line moving at the store.  If you can have help running the store from an assistant or volunteer, all the better! 

I find that younger students rely mostly on pennies for shopping, older students are fascinated by getting change back on their purchases (and often misunderstand this process as getting free money).  The most advanced students can be challenged to look at finished pieces of artwork and calculate the total cost of each project or compare two projects and determine which one cost more to produce.  Some students might be able to handle a budgeting aspect to the project, but I prefer not to include that element because of the social issues that crop up once you introduce scarcity into the classroom.  (Again, see this great post by Lori of Camp Creek Blog.)

Introduction to Money

Today we did a little introduction to money-- coin identification, so that over the next few days we can do additional work counting and comparing amounts of money.  I started with a whole-class overview on how to identify a penny, nickle, dime, and quarter.  I have a set of large demonstration coins, and we examined each coin in turn, discussing features that students noticed.  Size and color are obvious markings, but the class was most interested in talking about the presidents featured on each coin and the fact that statue of Abraham Lincoln can be seen sitting inside the Lincoln Memorial on the back of the penny.  I actually did not know this about the Lincoln statue until a student told me about it.  I'm not really sure how much the other kids actually understood about the idea that you could see a tiny speck that is supposed to be a giant statue in a building that according to another child "looks like a trolley car."  Then again, the point of the lesson wasn't in national monuments or presidents, but in learning to identify coins.  Attending to these details definitely helped the children differentiate amongst the coins!  After our brief discussion, I handed out baggies with one of each coin and asked the children to hold up each coin in turn.  They were very successful with this little test.  The workshop part of our day included several math choices, one of which was to make your own set of pretend coins out of brown and gray construction paper.  Students really got into this activity and many tried to include Abraham Lincoln sitting inside the Lincoln Memorial!  This being an open-ended task, there was a range of quality in the coins produced, but I told them I needed to be able to identify the coins they made without being told which was which.  Again, in most instances, they were successful.