Gingerbread Economics A Social Studies Unit for First Grade Room 12 Glencairn School December, 2001

In this social studies unit, the children were introduced to some economic terms: Human resources, natural resources, capital resources, goods and services, needs and wants, barter, opportunity cost, and specialization. These terms were introduced to the children through the story of the Gingerbread Man. We read several versions of the tale, and even created our own version, “The Gingerbread Dinosaur.” (Run, run, and run some more, you can’t catch me, I am the Gingerbread Dinosaur!) The children participated in several activities to help them understand the economics topics. We made Gingerbread cookies, which ran away. In searching for the cookies, the children learned about the careers of several of the parents. Here are some of the highlights of the unit!

Field Trip to the Grocery Store The children earned money at home by providing a service to their families. We used this money to buy groceries for a needy family. The children were given a tour of the grocery store.

Making Gingerbread Cookies The children helped to roll out and cut the dough to make the gingerbread cookies.

Choosing Decorations for the Cookies The first graders worked with their fourth grade buddies to decide which decorations to “buy” for their cookies. All of the decorations had a price, and the children had to decide which ones to buy with the money they were given. This was a great math lesson!

Fishing for Opportunity The children learned about opportunity cost through a fishing game. They could keep the item they “caught” or put it back in the pond to fish again. Their opportunity cost was was they gave up to get something.

Learning About Careers Parents of children in the class helped the students search for the cookies. They came to school to give the children information about the whereabouts of the missing cookies, and also told the children about their careers. They used economic terms we had learned in their talks to the class.

Looking for the missing cookies The children put out a path from our classroom down the hall to try to “lure” the missing cookies back to the classroom.

Missing Gingerbread Men! After we made and decorated the gingerbread cookies, the cookies ran away! The students made posters to try to find the missing cookies.

The End of the Story The missing gingerbread cookies were found and returned to our class by Mr. Seybert, our school principal. The children had fun as they were being introduced to some economic terms.