Second Semester

Welcome to second semester!  We started the semester with an easy assignment.  I am asking you to review the syllabus with your child, sign it, and have them return it to school.  There is really only one change from last semester.  At the end of each unit any missing assignments will go to a zero.  

We are wrapping up our economics unit this week by talking about different types of economies (command, market and traditional) and supply and demand.  There is a quiz on Thursday, the students were given a study guide on Monday. 

Next week we will start our White House unit, which has always been one of the kids favorites!  More on that to come...  

Incentive Day

Well, today is incentive day.  Congratulations to all the students who qualified to go skiing or swimming.  I'm taking my turn staying back at school.   Hopefully I can catch up on some work and get the spelling bee planned.  (Plus I love Valley Fair, so I definitely want to go on that one!)  Next week we will continue with economics.  I hope everyone has a great weekend.  

Innaguration

Yesterday we took the time to watch history in the making. I hope you were able to watch it as well.

End of the quarter is this Friday and the students will be going on their incentive day trip to the water park or skiing. Please check with your child that they have everything turned in. We have taken some time the past two days to work and catch up with everything. However, I may not get through all the papers until our work day on Monday and if you son or daughter is missing something it could affect their grade. Here's what we have turned in this past week...

Decision making grid
Four factors of production worksheet (ice cream and paper)
Four factors of production chart (they filled it in)
Vocabulary cards with definitions and pictures

Economics

Wow! What a crazy week. (Not that I'm complaining, two extra hours in the morning helps get the dishes done! And I finally got my tree down on our day off.)

Today we continued with the four factors of production. Each student had to think of a product and list the four factors of production for that product. They also had to illustrate each one.

For example:
Product - Peanut Butter
Land - soil, peanut plant, water
Labor - farmer, truck driver, grocery store worker, factory worker
Capital - machine to pick the nuts, machine to crush the nuts, trucks, jars, building, money
Management - farm owner, factory owner, store owner

Economics

Yesterday we talked about the three basic questions of economics:

1. What to produce?
2. For whom should we produce?
3. How should we produce it?

In groups the students thought of a product for seventh graders. We had everything from a credit card that never has a bill to a homework pen that gives you all the answers. While thinking of these products the students had to consider the three questions.


Today we talked about the four factors of production and watched a video about how a school uses these four factors.

1. Land/Natural Resources
2. Labor
3. Capital (money)
4. Management

Tomorrow the students will have to think of a product they have used or consumed and create a list of all the factors of production that go into making that product.

Economics

Last week we started our economics unit. Here are some basics we have talked about so far...

Economics - the study of the scarcity of all resources and the choices we make about how to use them.

Scarcity - not enough of something

Because resources are scarce we have to make choices about about how to use them.

Last week we did a coloring activity in class. The problem was that markers were scarce, which caused the students to make decisions. Hopefully this will help the students remember what scarcity is. We have also talked about the differences between needs and wants. (That was definitely an interesting conversation, especially with seventh graders!)

Stay Warm!!

Question of the day...

"Ms. Sakry, do you think we'll get out of school early?"