Paxton Lab

An Entreduction! (Entry into the world of Economics)

Our first entry into the realm of Economics came with a lesson about inventions and innovations. Students learned to distinguish between whether or not something is truly an invention or has the person just improved upon something that was already on the market. Students learned that an entrepreneur is a person who sees an opportunity and is willing to take the risk by either inventing or innovating a product. The entrepreneur sees economic value in innovating or inventing something that will change a person's life. Some examples they learned about were the Slinky and the Rubiks cube.

Westward Ho!

Since our ultimate goal is to have people choose our product it was important for students to understand that people make choices for many reasons. We started with the concept of choice and scarcity. We had a covered wagon that was heading west and we needed to choose what would go in our wagon. We only had so much money and so much space for our items The students worked in pairs and were only able to pick from some of the items below. The discussion was lively and led us to take a trip in 2021!

2021 Road Trip!

Heading West in the 1800s was a challenge but, could we make limited choices for ourselves in 2021 when given only a backpack to take on our family road trip in our new Mini Cooper! We could bring a friend but, together we could only take one backpack. You know those Mini's are small but, they get good gas mileage! Here are some of the things that were our choices. Most students did not bring any unmentionables ( until they found out what those were; then they wanted to add them!) This lesson incorporated our wants and needs, and scarcity. Ultimately this was about how and why we make choices.

PS- Even though a phone was part of the choices, I did not include a charger....this was off the grid vacation. Only the parents had one for emergencies!

CAN IT! Our Culminating Project

Each invented drink or innovated drink had to have the following as part of their product:

• UPC code

• List of ingredients

• Canned by the authority of (their name)

• Visual appeal

• A jingle to go with their product

• A great name to draw people to their product

The students took both a pre-test and a post-test and the results showed significant growth from the pre-test.

Economics is part of the curriculum for Social Studies but is a difficult subject for most students. If students take away one thing from this project I hope that they will remember that people must make choices because their money is limited! They found out through this project that the entrepreneur, is taking all the risk by investing their money and time, in hopes that people would buy their product and their investment would increase.

The AZ economic standards we covered are from 4th grade

4. E2.1 Examine concepts of scarcity, choice, opportunity cost, and risk