The Game of Life

I hope everyone is surviving the craziness teachers face this time of the year with end of the quarter, parent teacher conferences, and report cards. My crazy week just ended, and what a great feeling it is!  I have had some amazing days at school, and I am excited to share them with you over the next week!

I am one of the luckiest teachers because I have a wonderful resource teacher who pushes into my classroom everyday of reading and math. We work so well together and collaborating is our forte.

We had a week of working on adding and subtracting decimals using real life situations. Sammy and I thought of this idea of a classroom economy, and we couldn't figure out the details. After thinking about it more we came up with this idea of the Game of Life, and made it come to life!

Each kid started off with $1,000.00. At the beginning, everyone had to pick their job card which had their salary on it. As we cheered and oohed and ahhed for each other when they picked their cards, the kids began to get super excited!

Once everyone got their jobs and found out their salaries, we let them go and browse the 6 different sections they would be purchasing from, Cars, Houses, Entertainment, Electronics, Colleges, and Vacations. Their were 5 options at each. When Sammy and I were creating this activity we made the prices from super expensive to cheap. Our reason for this was to see what the kids would do and watch them try to budget their money. Throughout the activity, every time I would ring the bell, the students would receive a PAY DAY! At that point their were lots of, "YES!" "Finally!" "I really needed that!" There was even a kid who was begging for a pay day! :)

When we decided it was time, our students were allowed to make their purchases at their own speed. They used a tracking sheet similar to a check balance to keep track of purchases and salaries, deposits and withdraws. Students also had to watch out for the 2 police, good and bad. I was the good police because if I saw a student doing a great job, they would get to pick a lottery ticket with varying amounts. Sammy was the bad police because she gave out tickets with fines on them. She called out random birthday months, days of their birthday, and they had to go to the hall and pay up! One kid had to go out 4 times, "WHY ME?!"

Overall the activity was a success! Students were working on adding and subtracting decimals the whole time! The only rule was they had to have some money left over, and once they heard that they were going to make more purchases. One student said, "Well, I guess I'll go to college again!"

At the end, they were not ready for it to be over. Since this activity they have asked multiple times, "When are we going to play Life again?" I would call it a success. 

I have it up in my TPT store! If you have any questions feel free to email me at crazinessinfifth@gmail.com 

Happy Saturday!