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One of the things I like most about teaching art is using it to teach real-life skills. Art teaches kids how to make a plan and follow it, how to take a mistake and turn it into something good, how to be determined and see something through until the end... and lots of other good things! One real-life situation I wanted my kids to experience was having to work within a budget. Second graders are in the middle of an IB unit with economic themes- topics like good and services, and how supply and demand are related. To support this learning, I made my art students pretend to buy the supplies they wanted to use! But first, they had to earn some "money". During their last project, I passed out plastic gold coins as rewards for any good thing I saw students doing. They earned coins for things like staying on task, following directions the first time, and helping with clean-up procedures. I made sure everybody earned at least a few coins, and most students ended up with about ten. Several students had fifteen or more coins! At the end of that day, students turned their earned "money" back into me and I wrote down their total. We compared this to putting money in the bank- it's still your money, you're just letting someone else hold it. This week, they got to "spend" their money at our pretend Art Supply Store. I gave each student back the number of coins that they had earned, and they could use them to purchase anything they wanted. I tried to offer some unusual or special items that they don't normally have access to- like glitter crayons, colorful paper, metallic markers, neon oil pastels, yarn, buttons, beads... along with the typical scissors, glue, markers, colored pencils, paint, etc. To make the math easy, each item cost one coin. But first, I had students make a plan and write a shopping list. I had them write their total number of coins at the top, and then number that many lines down. They needed to think about the project they had in mind and carefully plan what they needed. I wanted them to avoid spending all their money on glitter crayons, only to realize they forgot to buy paper to draw on! It was important for them to think all the way through their project and predict all of their needs. This is a hard skill, but an important one! Of course, students ran into some problems. In one situation, there was no more red paint left and a student really wanted some. She learned she could barter with another student who wanted her gold sharpie, and they made a trade! In a different situation, a student wanted yellow paper, but there was only one piece and another student had already claimed it. The student offered his classmate TWO coins and was able to buy it from him! I wanted these types of problems to occur, so that students could explore some problem-solving skills. Students had complete freedom over what they made, so there were some interesting creations! Here is some of their work:
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