Showing posts with label economics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economics. Show all posts

Friday, December 13, 2013

Starville: mini-society

Starville is a mini-society that third graders participate in each December. It is definitely one of the FAVORITE activities of third grade at my school. When the fourth graders see what Starville is happening, they ask their teachers if they can go back to third grade for the day!

To start, each student applies for a first and second choice job to work in Starville. Each student will work two jobs and we guarantee that they will get one of their two choices, but they might not get both of them. In the weeks leading up to Starville, the students participate in production activities to make crafts that will be sold at Starville. This year, we made pet rocks, duct tape flower pencils, salt-dough ornaments, talking snowmen (on clothespins), and tissue paper flowers.

On the day of Starville, the teachers transform the classrooms into mini stores and the students are given their jobs. Half the grade level works while the other shops, then they switch. There are four 'sessions' of Starville so everyone gets to shop twice. The students are paid $1.50 in plastic money to shop with, good thing most everything costs five to ten cents!

And here's the pictures:


Monday, November 26, 2012

Talking Snowmen

We are gearing up for Starville, our economics unit's culminating mini-Society, next Friday, December 7th. Today production began for products to be sold at Starville. Our class made Talking Snowmen today!

What you need: cardstock with templates drawn, clothespins, pipe cleaners, markers, scissors, and a hot glue gun

Here are the templates for the students to decorate, each students gets one head and one hat

May use any color for hat decoration, must cover entire hat with no white showing; Head needs two eyes (positioned low enough so hat can be glued on) and a dot smile. Pipe cleaners twirled around a sharpened pencil make perfect noses!

 Hot glue the pipe cleaner noses on and (teacher) cut across for mouth opening; hot glue each piece onto clothes pin opening


 See? The Snowman can talk!