We are about to embark on Village – something which you'll be hearing a lot more about. But before we dove in in earnest, Gabe, Cathy and I wanted to make sure that students had a chance to really understand the how and why of a lot of the math they would be doing.
The Math of Building - Gabe taught the group about the math of carpentry. Every student is building a house to 1/24th scale but in order to build that house they must fill out a wood order form that shows the dimensions of each side of their house and lists the area of that piece (wood is paid for by the square mini-foot). Students must also use a T-square to mark their house sides on a piece of plywood so that it can be cut on a table saw (don't worry, adults do that (volunteers welcome!)) Marking perfectly square sides and nicely centered right triangles is no easy feat.
It is hard for most students to move from the idea of their house (many have been sketching for weeks) to the actuality of breaking down the house into pieces. We help them build paper houses so they can see how everything comes together. Some try to count the square mini feet of their paper house (they use 1/2 inch graph paper) but soon discover that using area formulas is not only easier but more accurate than trying to use their paper house. Many students choose to stick with a familiar house shape but some feel more confident and push themselves into less familiar territory – puzzling out crazy roof angles, geodesic domes and more.
The Math of Banking - Cathy is our doyen of the bank and she taught a class about how checking accounts work (including collateral and interest). She then taught the class how to fill out a check and how to keep a check registry. Students who overdraw their accounts are subject to fines and are enrolled in a financial literacy class run by Cathy. This is really key learning. Many students don't realize at first that a check (or credit card) is not "free" money. Once they start writing checks and subtracting money from their account. They get it.
Students eventually get tired of writing check after check and devise a system of cash. They buy the cash by writing a check to the bank (we've dreamed of 1/24th scale ATMs but it's not a reality…yet.)
This year, in an effort to stave off any attempts to counterfeit the currency, the federal bank is going to be randomly auditing student accounts. Any student who is keeping a well organized check registry which aligns with the Federal Bank spreadsheet will receive a 3-D printed 1/24th scale garden gnome (yes they are as cool as they sound). Students whose check registries do not reflect the activity in their accounts will be "invited" to come to the financial literacy class. If many students' registries don't align, the federal government will have no choice but to assume that counterfeiting is ocurring and inflation will affect the store prices. (You may be wondering how we could determine counterfeiting based only on the check registry since, presumably, cash purchases would not show up there…shhh! We'll also be keeping a rough total of all of the money in circulation based on deposits.)
The Math of Micro Macro Economics - I taught a class on the village store and businesses. It started simply as I explained how unit pricing works in the store and how to fill out a receipt that listed the item, units desired and price per unit. We talked about how stealing affects prices in the store (they go up to cover the cost of lost inventory).
Students then learned about how to set prices for items they are creating for a business. The concept of net profit is new to many students (perhaps because most parents subsidize lemonade stands and the like). Students learn two formulas for determining profit – one that just looks at the cost of materials and one that also helps them consider the cost of their time when creating items. We talked about what kind of profit margin is ideal and the challenges of selling a commodity (less profit per item means you have to sell an awful lot.) This led us to branding one's product and creating benefit driven advertising in order to ensure one can make a good profit.
I encouraged students to have their businesses appraised. In appraisal, students are rewarded for solid business plans, evidence of market research, branding and marketing, a proven track record of sales and any buildings and vehicles their business owns. Often students businesses are appraised for many times more than what they ever sell in the duration of Village.
Students also learned about customs. Anything that is used in Village must be purchased. Students are allowed to bring items from home to use in the game but they must be brought through the customs agent (me). Items that are "raw" materials – food ingredients, craft materials etc. – are brought through customs at the same price they might be sold for in the store if the store had them. (I put "raw" in quotations because students always point out that flour or a pipe cleaner are, in fact, manufactured items. However, we don't require students to grind their own grain nor mine for ore and smelt their own steel wire…at least not yet.)
Then we talked about the dreaded tariff. If a product is made with the labor of someone outside of village (such as the Lego or Playmobil company…or a parent coerced into making 50 tiny cookies after a child has gone to bed) there is a tariff put on it. Students learn that a tariff is a tax that countries levy in order to encourage a product to be made in their own country. Because we want kids to figure out how to make their own car, for example, we put a steep tariff on a remote control car they might already have at home.
We also touched on currency valuation (which doesn't happen until students determine how much land each citizen gets and then prices are set so that 1/3 of the students buying power enables them to have a nice medium size house) and how to receive money for federal jobs and town jobs.
Whew! Believe it or not, there was even more. But that gives you a taste of some of the math that is going on in village. This is the first year that we have taught these courses separately and students were grateful to have the time to really learn about it. As one fifth grader told me, "Yeah, I was doing all the math last year but I was really just doing what people told me to do, I didn't understand why I was doing it."
The Rookery 
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