Itty Bitty, Little City {economics made fun}

each year our second grade hosts what we call “Itty Bitty City”

It is the culmination of our Economics unit and it’s a BLAST!
This year we added a few things and I wanted to share what we did because it can easily be tweaked for your use

each classroom decides on a good to sell and a service to provide
Our services are: a bank, a post office, a theatre, and a nail salon {me…yay!}
Our goods were: stationary, hobby shop with paper airplanes, cootie catchers, etc, a bakery, and a book store {yay! me again!}

We setup the day before and this year I even trained my nail techs on proper painting techniques…fyi…some even earned tips!

The only prep are the goods and they are all donated. We sent letters home schoolwide for used books and little debbies

Here’s how it went down…

These are in the hallway at the “main intersection” to our classrooms

Kinders and first graders are given 5 dollars of Itty Bitty money to spend on goods and services. Two classes visit for 30 minutes at a time. We charge anywhere from 50 cents to 3 dollars. Every student has a job and when they are not on the job, they get to be a consumer.

The Bakery

The Nail Salon

Prior to Itty Bitty City each child makes a replica mini-building. These pictures are from last year, but this year they could only use milk cartons we saved from the lunchroom {our little part to save the planet I guess}. I will post more pics cause they are caa-ute.

And here are some freebies in case you want to run your own little city!

and here’s an editable project and rubric

This one is pretty much caters to our school, but here’s a peek at our reflection booklet for the little producers after it’s all said and done. And don’t forget to pick up my Thinking Maps for Teaching Little Economists pack!

and I leave you with happy thoughts for your fast approaching 100th day. Ours’ is Monday and I picked up Lesson Plan SOS’s 100th Day Survivor pack. I can’t wait! Of course I will do the 100 item trail mix and make a hat or two! They are classics.

Happy February!

Last year’s Crayon Box that Talked bulletin board that we will replicate this week. I love that little book!

Reading Street, Workshop, and focus walls

I will begin this post with an explanation and apology. It will be lengthy (at least for my posts) and rambly…

Last year was my first year in 2nd grade, with Daily 5, Café, and Math Expressions. I pretty much change things up yearly-there is just so much you live and learn, but geez…

Just a note-I thought it was easy to combine D5 workshop with Reading Street. I used the basal, which has some great literature by the way, most every week. I do find this series to be overwhelming and I def. had to pick and choose what elements I was going to utilize. I am very indecisive flexible when it comes to instruction and scheduling in my classroom. If I don’t like how something is going, I change it.

By year’s end my reading workshop looked like this:

*Word sort at seat (did I mention it was our first year with Words Their Way, too) but I LOVE IT so no biggie. If you don’t use it already, use the online stopwatch site for speed sorts…oh my! Be sure to scroll down-the bomb is the class’ personal fav.

*meet at the rug for phonics or vocab minilesson. If there is one thing I found useful in Reading Street it was the word work/phonics lessons. Awesome. I love word ladders. My kiddos used little white boards at the rug. I am pretty sure it was their favorite type of minilesson. We also did dictation sentences using the spelling test section. Since I used WTW, the spelling was a nice tie in to the phonics that week that they had to apply.

*Read to Self (always round 1)

*meet back at the rug for skill or strategy minilesson. I used the basal or other picture book to intro the skills. You can really use it exclusively, but I love books too much. I used the basal like any other picture book. The difference was each kiddo had their own copy! I pull these lessons from any and everywhere. The Lesson Plan SOS ladies are my new go to though!

*Round 2-choice. I had a clipboard with all their little names down the side and daily choices across the top. You can find the original here (I just redid mine a little-like added lots of lines for kids!). They raised their hand when they were ready to tell me their choice and the round was 20-30 mins depending on how many kids I had to meet with. (this is my weak area so I am not going in to depth here. We do use mClass assessing that rocks my the way)

That’s it. We went in to some sort of terrible writing lesson here then Author’s Chair. I am still lost about wiring instruction with 7 year olds at this point…

There are some changes I will make this year however. One is a mini focus wall. I moved my huge Pottery Barn rug to school (after we repainted, it no longer matched and I can’t justify selling it for 1/10th what I paid). I moved my meeting area in front of our tv so I can utilize it more during this time. I love using games during this time. (see the links at the bottom of this post) This left my desk right beside my rug. Since the side is ugly and bare, but magnetic, I made this little focus wall to cutesy it up and be a reminder of what we are working on that week. You can download it for free below.

For now it is going to be the story book cover, the skill, the strategy, and the genre. I am undecided about where to house the vocab words and hf words…I am doing a large word collector and sounds we know boards for vocab. this year.

Focus Wall Mini

More info will come as I think things over more thoroughly. Right now I am still in “I have to get the room situated before I can think about academics” mode. I will also get some pictures of it soon. We were teased with a hot minute to come in and work yesterday before the new hallway tile is waxed. My mom and I worked most of the day, but how much can this gal get done with 3 boys with her…nada!

If you use reading street, here are my delicious bookmarks for resources on the web

Blog Stalking

Okay, since I cannot get into my own classroom until...ekk...next month...I have been stalking around teacher blogs. Needless to say, I am OBSESSED with two I found yesterday! Literally could not wait to get up this morning!

http://www.oneextradegree.blogspot.com/

  

http://lessonplansos.blogspot.com/

 
I have spent a small fortune on TpT digging into these wonderful ladies units and plans! My favorites from One Extra Degree: Sub Tub, Newsies, Data Folders (super excited to spruce up my Brain Binders!), and Student-Led Conferences Bundle.
Favorites from SOS: EVERYTHING...but in particular the Back to School bundle, Life Cycle of a Chicken, and the Guided Reading books-these babies are packed! Woo-Hoo!!
Happy Blog Stalking!