The most difficult skills for most first graders is telling time and handling money. Both of these important life skills also provide opportunities to demonstrate an important links between the math concepts we are learning in class, such as addition and subtration, skip counting and grouping. They get to see the real world application of math and understand “why we need to know this stuff.” Instead of sitting down filling out worksheet after worksheet of circles with numbers in the middle, we decided to create a classroom store where the students had a chance to by and sell toys to their classmates.
Students were asked to price their inventory up to 25cents. They quickly priced all their items, set up their stores, and opened for business. Each store had two sellers and 1 buyer. The buyers job was to purchase items at other stores to keep replenishing their own stock. Some stores ran out of money and items relatively quickly, while other stores were over flowing with items and money and other stores had plenty of stock but no money to purchase things. “It’s not fair,” chimed several students. The excercise seemed to be stalled periodically, while students were then asked to evaluate the issue and come up with their own solutions to the rising problems. After serious thought and investigation, some adjustments were made and stores were back in business. Our students realized if all their items were too inexpensive or too expensive, they would go out of business very quickly, but if they had a range in the pricing of their items with a majority midpriced, they could keep their businesses open. Not only were our kids getting great practice with their math skills, but also in economics! We are all looking forward to opening for business again.
