I know that in an effort to link school to the 'real world' teachers sometimes have kids make shopping lists and look up prices to do math or social studies (econ) projects. Jungle Jim's sends out their entire flyer as a .pdf file with descriptions of products and prices. No newspaper fuss or inky fingers... every kid gets a copy (don't let them print).
You may find other stores' flyers... can you say comparison shopping?
I like that this math teacher tried to have students use real-world situations to incorporate everyday math applications. Not only does it teach economics and math, it hopefully will help students appreciate how expensive food can be, and the value of budgeting and decision-making, as well as the concepts of needs and wants (a kindergarten content standard :)). The students might also be a little more appreciative of what their parents have to deal with on a weekly basis. The only part that might be a little difficult to implement in the lesson is having computer availability for the students to comparison shop online, versus the relative ease of just flipping through a grocery store advertising flyer. But we do want to promote "green practices", especially with Earth Day upon us! Interesting teaching opportunity for students!
ReplyDeleteThumbs up. Could be a good way to mix things up, and do math or econ in a different way.
ReplyDeleteJungle Jim's is a really great store, if you've never been there and it looks like they have a nice website, too! Meijer has a good site (meijer.shoplocal.com) and so does Target (target.com) with electrionic ads like this one from Jungle Jim's. Aldi is another one that's good (http://aldi.us/us/html/offers/weekly_ads_ENU_HTML.php?WT.z_src=main). Maybe there are others but I would at least check those three out - they're pretty user-friendly. Giant Eagle supposedly has the same thing but their site is harder to navigate than the other two. Happy ad-browsing! :-)
ReplyDeleteWhoa! Information overload! Once I looked at the first page with all the pdfs of the newspaper ads, it was like colors everywhere. However, I do like the concept of going to one place to find a variety of information. Definitely a form of comparison shopping and with gas prices going up everyday, I won't mind saving a bit here and there.
ReplyDeleteI think you could do many different projects with this type of medium. You could have a math project where they find stats, or look at the price increase of food over time. The possibles are almost endless. I think I would have my students create a budget and get them use to knowing how much food cost, and just day to day living can be. Let them create a fake family and let them pick a job and see if they can manage their money and other actives. I think it would be neat to see!
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