Money, Money, Money...Not So Funny

My Students

Why does money change and vary depending on the time period and location? What would be required to create a new currency? What would a school-wide currency look like? For what purposes could it be used? Those are some of the questions we will be exploring together with this project.

My 3rd graders will be eager to learn when they walk through our doors, however, like all human beings, sometimes they need a little motivation to stay focused and produce their best work.

Art is often that motivator. Sometimes that motivator can be an incentive. Other times the motivator can be the pure joy of learning and creating! My students are motivated by both intrinsic and extrinsic motivators. Like all learners, they learn best when they can connect meaning and background experience to their new learning.

My Project

By the end of the first 6 weeks of school we will be settled into our routines and community/classroom work. The students will have an understanding of the routine and the expectations inside and outside our classroom. We will also have finished our first literacy unit on money. My class will work alongside the art teacher to create individual designs for coin currency. We will need blue, purple, gold, silver, red and green PLA filament, a new glass printing bed, Elmer's glue, and a Makerbot Digitizer Desktop 3D Scanner. After reading and researching money, both past and present, local and far away, they will begin drawing their own coin design and then making a large 3d model which we will then scan and resize to a typical coin size. When the model has been scanned, using the Makerbot scanner, we will print the resized version. We will end with creating a class iBook showing the process and information we learned during this activity. Each student will give a copy of their coin to their kindergarten buddy after we've had a gallery show displaying their drawings, models, and 3d prints while also experimenting with QR codes on posters.

This project provides a meaningful connection to currency: its purpose and design.

It allows the students to share background information, family geographical information, and coin collections thereby bringing more meaning to the project. It allows for students to share their ideas with partners, small groups, whole group and then finally with an audience. Students are able to express their ideas in writing, drawing, models, and computer QR codes while collaborating and creating their coins.