Open a flower shop specializing in handmade bouquets. This place value and economics exploration is adapted from Crayola Dream-Makers®.

• 1.

  Almost everyone loves to shop. Knowing how decimal points and place values work is essential when you’re dealing with money. To practice these skills, create these budding flower stems and then try to buy a bouquet on a budget.

• 2.

  Create blossoms. Cover your art area with newspaper. Decorate flattened coffee filters with Crayola® Fabric Markers. Experiment with geometric patterns, symmetrical designs, and radial motifs. Beautify your blossoms with Crayola Glitter Glue. Air-dry the glue.

• 3.

  Make flower stems. Twist the center of each blossom into a point. Place the point against the top of a Crayola Colored Pencil barrel. Wrap with floral tape to hold your blossom in place.

• 4.

  Add price tags. Cut small paper rectangles with Crayola Scissors. Mark different prices on tags. Punch holes and tie price tags to stems with string.

• 5.

  Buy a bouquet. Choose a spending limit. Use or make play money to purchase a bouquet that’s within your budget. Check each other’s purchases to make sure you stayed within your spending limits.

Standards

• LA: Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade level topics and texts, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly.
• LA: Conduct short research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question), drawing on several sources and generating additional related, focused questions.
• LA: Report on a topic or text, tell a story, or recount an experience with appropriate facts and relevant, descriptive details, speaking clearly at an understandable pace.
• MATH: Add, subtract, multiply, and divide decimals to hundredths, using concrete models or drawings and strategies based on place value, properties of operations, and/or the relationship between addition and subtraction; relate the strategy to a written method and explain the reasoning used.
• MATH: Convert among different-sized standard measurement units within a given measurement system (e.g., convert 5 cm to 0.05 m), and use these conversions in solving multi-step, real world problems.
• SS: Give examples of the various institutions that make up economic systems such as families, workers, banks, labor unions, government agencies, small businesses, and large corporations.
• SS: Demonstrate the role of money in everyday life.
• VA: Select media, techniques, an processes; analyze what makes them effective or not effective in communicating ideas; and reflect upon the effectiveness of choices.
• VA: Intentionally take advantage of the qualities and characteristics of art media, techniques, and processes to enhance communication of experiences and ideas.

Adaptations

• Possible classroom resources include: The Flower Man by Mark Ludy; A Flower in the Snow by Tracey Corderoy
• Invite the owner of a floral shop to visit with the class to discuss the daily running of a small business, purchasing decisions, employee hiring and scheduling, etc. Students compose questions for the meeting. After the visit, students post learning to a class blog.
• Encourage students to create more than one flower. Each flower should be an example of a different specimen. For example, one may be a daisy, another a rose, etc. Price each accordingly.
• Students organize a class "store" to include their flowers, additional items, and services created in the classroom. Provide time in the school day, or week, for students to "run" the store. After a period of "running" the store, students workers post thoughts, learning, frustrations, etc. to a class blog.