Financial Literacy Unit! We all can relate to money! Teaching 4th graders how to calculate cost and profit, as well as fixed and variable expenses is important. You never know what future entrepreneur is in our class. For our unit topic closure, we created an activity under the Small Christmas Bussiness theme.
Students had to figure out the costs, sales price and profit of four products in different factories: Ugly Christmas Sweater Co., Winter Wonderland Candles, Gingerbread Bakery, Candy Cane Shop, and Magic Forest Tree Farm. This required them higher-order thinking for sure. In each business, they had to read the product sheets to determine the materials and labor involved. Quantity varied according to the size, so they had to apply the rule to each product. Some of the proportions where fractions and decimals, the students surprisingly were not baffled about this and were able to figure out the amounts. Once they fill up the cost, they had to either figure out the sales price when given the desired profit or vice-versa.
The activity was successful, all students started with the Christmas Sweater Company, and as they advanced they received stickers. Although, some pairs couldn't pass further than the Gingerbread Bakery all were engaged and practice reading tables, multiplying, adding and subtracting. Time constrictions didn't allow us to complete all the five companies, but we did good business!
TEKS: 10.B