Not so lucky penny?

This week, we returned from spring break and began a very fun and interesting class: Personal Finance!  Yay!  Our lovely teacher, Mrs. Weser, started off this very fun week with a power point on money, what it is, its characteristics and the function of it.  Our thought question was "What is money?"  I don't know about you, but before the power-point I had a very tough time trying to find the words to use to describe exactly what it was.  I always thought of it as just green paper we use in order to purchase items but in reality money is "any good that is widely accepted for the purposes of exchange and in the repayments of debts."  We even watched a video on how a man was able to get a house by trading a bunch of items but started off with a paper clip.  Crazy right?!  Today, everyone opened their own bank accounts in Weserville and received checkbooks!  How exciting!  This activity will help us learn how to write a check and manage our bank accounts carefully.  I honestly cannot wait to get started!  The most interesting part of this week for me was learning about how the penny may actually be costing everyone more money.  I love picking up pennies that are faced up because then I'll have good luck but in reality do pennies cause us bad luck?            

New Studying Method

This week in the wonderful class of Economics, we learned about GDP and what it takes to figure it out!  Doing the math is easy!  The formula is C+I+G+X, which stand for consumption, investments, government spending and next exports.  We also learned about recession and depression, four stages of the business cycle, the different ownership of a business.  Our lovely teacher also discovered a very unique yet effective way to prepare for our test!  She put the letters A,B,C,D in different areas of the room and she would ask us a multiple choice question, read the choices and we would have to walk to the letter we felt was the answer!  How much fun was that???  I thought it was so much fun!  A great way to help us prepare for the test and not just reading the questions and asking what we think the answer is!  I really think we should do this more often because it is a great way to make everyone move and such a fun way to study!  I really thought moving around the room helped us all remember the answer to the question!  I hope we do this more often!

PepsiCo

This was probably one of my favorite lessons in the wonderful class of Economics!  We discussed the differences of monopoly, oligopoly, perfect competition and monopolistic competition.  We talked about the number of buyers and sellers, the types of products, control of prices and freedom to enter or exit for each of these and found out the most competitive is perfect competition with monopoly being the least competitive.  I did not fully understand what a monopoly was until we watched a video on Pepsi Co!  In this video, we discovered that Pepsi Co is not only in charge of the second most popular soft drink but also owns large brand names, including Frito Lay and Quaker!  It was really fascinating to learn that all of my favorite snack and breakfast foods are all owned by the same company!  A monopoly is defined as only having one seller and controls the prices and Pepsi Co is a perfect example of this!  We also learned that in different countries the same company produces the same product but in different flavors, for example, the curry flavored Lays chips!  I was so happy to watch this video and really learn what exactly a monopoly was and how it worked and this really helped me understand it.  Because it had to do with food, something we all know and love so very dearly, it really made it exciting and interesting and easy to focus on!  If anyone asked what a monopoly was I would definitely show them this video to have a full understanding of this type of competition!  What a fun lesson!