Money:

The History of Money

 

            Today's Snack: Since we're going to be learning about the history of money all around the world, let's try a "global" snack: a small bowl of rice with a dunk or two of soy sauce (Asia), chunks of cut-up baked yam with brown sugar (Africa), a small hunk of cheese with a cracker (Europe), and some As-American-As-Apple juice (not pie).

 

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Supplies:

www.bigsiteofamazingfacts.com/history-of-money

http://www.ptma.org/historyofmoney.html

Paper and pen or pencil

Various supplies to make a visual aid - depends on

the student's idea; if you are at an organized after-school,

you may have to bring it in the next day

 

 

            Read either of these reports on the history of money.

 

            Now choose something mentioned in the article, write a one-paragraph explanation of it in your own words, and make a "visual aid" about it.

 

            Learning how to write about a topic, and "bring it alive" for an audience with some kind of a visual aid, is a great skill.

 

A "visual aid" is some kind of device that goes beyond words on a page that you might write, or words that you might say aloud to an audience, to explain your topic, in 3-D.

 

Examples of a visual aid: a unique object such as an antique machine, a poster, an experiment, a short film, a song, a map, a display board, a book, a costume, an audience-participation skit, etc. etc.

 

A visual aid works best when it is nice-looking or otherwise captivating; unusual so that it will hold your audience's interest, and relates clearly to the topic or idea you are trying to communicate.

 

You will really need to be good at developing and using visual aids for speech class and regular class presentations in school, and later, in real life, for all kinds of meetings and demonstrations - any time you are trying to communicate knowledge to someone else, which will be needed just about every hour of every day!

 

So, for example, if you chose to write about where we get the expression "shelling out" - because seashells are found everywhere and make a convenient medium of monetary exchange -- you could bring in some seashells and hold different ones up to pretend each one contained a different monetary value.

 

Or you could pick three volunteers from your group, and give each of them one item that kids your age would like to buy. Then give the kids in your group a handful of shells each. Let them "buy and sell" and see who ends up with what.

 

Or you could paint a watercolor of a seashell, attach a price to it, and see if any other student would buy it - "shell out," in other words.