photo by Tetsumo www.flickr.com
On today’s Maniac Monday post, I am writing from a prompt I received from JuiceBoxJungle. First I’m going to answer the question as a parent and then as a teacher. Then I’m going to talk about how you could use this same writing journal prompt with your students and/or children to teach money sense and paragraph writing. So, here we go. . .
Kodak and JuiceBoxJungle sponsored me to write this fun post about what I’d do with a surprise extra $100 if someone handed it to me next month.
As a parent: So, next month, March, is parent teacher conferences for my stepson. My husband and I will travel to Missouri for his conference and then spend time with him. I could really use the EXTRA $100 for this trip. My stepson’s grades are improving and improving and improving, which means he is working really hard, and so I would ask him, “Where do you want to go out to eat?” (Of course, he will probably choose McDonald’s, so we’ll have plenty of money to do something else, too.) We could also take him roller skating or bowling–two activities he likes very much that can actually be rather pricey for two adults and one child–depending on how many games you bowl or if you need to rent skates and so on. The extra $100 would also help with the gas for a 5 1/2 hour trip there and back. (Not to mention, the snacks that we just can’t seem to leave at the gas station!)
photo by stacy michelle www.flickr.com
As a teacher: this might be a hard question to answer as a teacher because you never know what you might need any given month (especially with some of the state budget problems in Illinois). But in my experience, you can never have enough books, and I always wanted to buy more and more books. I wanted to buy book sets, 5 or 6 copies of the same book. I also wanted to buy books that went with my units in social studies and science because books are such a great way to open a lesson or provide more information to students in an entertaining way. I also tried to purchase books that fit my students’ interests that year. More than likely, there would be a student interested in the same thing the next year, so the book would get plenty of use.
You can use this writing journal prompt with your students or your children if you home school to meet two different objectives. The first is money sense. Unfortunately as we all realize, one hundred dollars doesn’t buy as much as it used to! So, if you gave this prompt to your students, what would they want to buy with an extra $100? If they write “two Nintendo DS games,” then they understand how much $100 is. If they write down a weekend trip to NYC and you live in California, then you know you need to backtrack and talk to them about how much things cost and how much $100 is. (Of course, this is depending on the age of the child. If you teach preschool, it might be fun to see what those children think $100 can buy. 
You can also talk about paragraph structure with this prompt. Students have their topic sentence pro