Marketplace Day 5/28/10

One day last week Marc came home talking about Marketplace Day. He said it was on Friday. When I asked him what it was his answer was "It's where we go any buy things, some are real and some are fake". Well, that cleared things right up! ;-) We hadn't gotten anything sent home from school talking about it so I was completely confused. I asked my neighbor whose kids go to CW as well. It turns out, what Marketplace day is:
3rd graders sell goods and services that kids from the rest of the school "buy" with play money they have earned in their classrooms. The 3rd graders then get to buy prizes with the money they made selling their stuff. It was kinda fun. Both my Mom and I were in Marc's classroom that day. Mrs Grimm told us to go down and go shopping for free. We walked in and were each handed about 5-7 dollars to shop with. Marc got $5 from his classroom. We bought more money (donations go towards buying the prizes for the 3rd graders). Marc was able to spend in total about $20ish. Everything cost either $1 or $2, so he got lots of stuff, 90% of it was food. ;)
The first purchase he made was nachos.He also bought a long eraser, candy, cookies, erasers, magnet, key chain, mystery balloon, chocolate covered pretzel, vase, flower rings, and I can't remember what else. The whole gym was filled with tables of various things to buy.
It was kinda fun going in there, there was a lot of energy and excitement. I am not positive what the lesson for the 3rd graders was, but what a fun way for the kid to learn about money, marketing, selling, product development, etc. As I was walking around I was looking and storing ideas for possible things for Marc to do when he gets in 3rd grade. From this year the ideas that I am filing away are the nachos and the mystery filled balloons. :-) Super fun idea!