Day 13, Kasese, 3rd school day with children

November 22nd, Wednesday. Unfortunately I was still having some stomach issues but good enough to decide to teach today.  This would be my last class with theses children so we finished up on money topics such as making wise spending choices.  I had the little kids first while the older when for "football"

For class, we set up a pretend market place with 5 shops selling various "food" items: cassava (sticks) at 500 shillings (sh), potatoes (large rocks) at 300 sh, bread (medium rocks) at 400 sh, tomatoes (coffee beans) at 200 sh and rice (small pebbles) at 100 sh. Then I assigned 5 shop keepers for each food item.

By the way, around the school is a bunch of coffee trees with coffee beans all over the group.  It was neat to see them in there "original" form before all the packaging. I didn't know they are green first!

A group of children were assigned to gather the supplies from outside for the pretend market.  I wanted to let them all gather the supplies together but the class sizes was too large for that to be done in a organized, timely fashion. (Younger group was about 88 children one day, and older group was about 60 children with usually only one staff member to help/interprete for me)

Then we used leaves as money and each child got 5 leaves (1 leaf = 100 sh) to use at the market.  The leaves worked perfectly for money being long, green and shiny. The instructions were to buy whatever they want but once the money is done they had to go sit down (teaches money is a limited resource). They also were to use all the money they had. This allowed me to demonstrate good business management as the shop keepers counted up the money at the end and it showed (as I predicted) the middle prices goods sold the best. 

I taught other economic topics too such as if all things are equal a lower priced item will sell better than the same item at a higher price. I explained this after the whole class was given 3 leaves/money to buy a packet of crackers. My only instructions were 1) they can only buy one packet of crackers and 2) to spend their money wisely.  Three "shop keepers" were selling the exact same cracker packets but at different prices. At the end, I asked the shop keepers to show the class the amounts they earned.  The one who has her crackers priced at 100 sh made the most sales.

After class with the young ones, because the other group was not finished yet, we went outside and I taught them how to play "duck, duck, chicken" (they don't have geese here). They were delighted. Even the staff commented on the game. Simple game in my mind but big impact here.