3rd Grade Economics

This past week a parent contacted me to let me know that children were making and planning to sell homemade posters and wooden toys at school for money. We admired the initiative of the children starting these businesses but felt uncomfortable with the exchange of money at school. Was there a way to keep the interest alive with an alternative like play money? I gathered the class for a discussion.

K: We could make play money.
M: But if just anyone can make the money then it is pointless. I has no value.
G: Maybe we could have a mint that makes the official kind of money like our government does.
M: It just seems too easy to copy.
Me: I have access to a copy machine and more unusual colors of paper up in the office. It is paper that isn't just in all of the classrooms.
K: You could use the money from math. It looks really official.
R: We could just pay in things like rocks and sticks like we did last year in the garden.
Me: I remember that. Is it going to be a problem that you are out on the field now? There aren't as many rocks and sticks out there.
M: That is even better because they will be more valuable.
H: If we use the money, how will it get out into the world?
F: We could just have a bank. You could go get money at the bank.
H: In the real world you don't just get free money.
Me: If I go to the bank to get money I would have already had to put that money in the bank earlier. They just hold it for me. Maybe you could all start earning it by doing extra jobs around school.
M: I would rather just trade natural resources. Rocks are much more valuable to me than fake money.
R: But if you do natural resources, what is the work you have to do for that?
H: You would have to go mine it out of the ground.
Me: Right, you spend your precious time and energy gathering those things and people are willing to trade or pay you for it because they don't want to spend their own time doing the work.

The conversation went on and on. The children thought about trading product for product. Or natural resource for resource. Could they set up a trading post? What jobs could they do? How would we make the money earning opportunities even?

We voted on a currency. The children chose natural resources. One student asked, "I still like the idea of money, I just liked natural resources better. Can we just do all of them?" We decided no to limit ourselves to just one form of currency.

That very day during Spanish I got busy printing official money. By lunch the children were harvesting resources, making trades, forming business partnerships and making plans for their future fortunes.

A stick with more unusual characteristics may be more valuable.

Harvesting rocks to sell to rock smashers for money.

Money is kept in the watchful care of bankers while work is done during recess.

Smashing rocks makes them more valuable.

"Is crushed rock more valuable than a whole rock?"
"Yes, especially if you can get a piece that is just pure crystal."

The game allows us to substitute more authentic
questions into our math unit on data analysis.

Through out this process I am thankful to be in an environment where I have permission to slow down and give time to the things that are important to the children. Not an hour passes without me hearing whispered business plans. And never have the children so eager to pick up trash from the far corners of the playground.