Students investigate familiar toys and games. They consider the factors to be taken into account when planning a purchase.
In this module students investigate familiar toys and games. They will consider the factors to be taken into account when planning a purchase.
Learning outcomes:
Students will explore and describe their role, rights and responsibilities as a consumer.
Students will examine and describe the factors that influence people’s purchasing decisions.
Key concepts:
- Goods and services
- Market
- Choices
- Financial decision-making
Conceptual understandings:
- The market provides a range of goods and services.
- Financial decision-making affects people, the community, and the environment.
1. Our favourite things
Ask students to bring a favourite toy or game from home to share with the class. In groups, have them introduce the item and explain where it came from and why they like it.
Link to mathematics and statistics
Students collate and display data and communicate their findings from this activity.
They can:
- group the toys and games into categories to identify any patterns or trends in their choices.
- record how each student got the toy or game, (for example, as a birthday gift, purchased with pocket money, passed down from older sibling, and so on).
2. Big decisions
Explain that this is a class exercise to explore how we make decisions about the things we choose to buy. Tell the class that they have been gifted $50 to buy toys and games for wet-weather days. The students are to decide what they would like to buy with this money.
List a range of store websites and collect junk-mail advertising brochures that include images and prices of games and toys suitable for class use on wet-weather days. Group students and have them browse the websites and brochures for items they would choose to buy within their $50 spending limit. Have them print or cut out their chosen items, sort them into categories (such as board games, puzzles, building and construction sets, arts and crafts materials) and then paste them onto a display board.
In their groups students can discuss their reasons for the choices they made.
Questions to use as discussion prompts:
- How did your interests and prior experiences influence your choices?
- Did the opinions, preferences, or experiences of other group members influence your choices?
- Did advertising influence your decisions?
- How much did the price of items affect your decisions?
- Did you take the safety of items into account when you were making your choices?
- Did you consider how well items were made, how long they would last, and whether they would be practical for class use?
After this discussion, have the groups each record the three factors they consider were most important for making good choices.
3. Making choices
Have each group select their top three choices of toys or games from their display boards and list or display images of these on a whiteboard.
Link to mathematics and statistics
Students can collect and display data and communicate findings during this activity.
They can:
- use a tally chart to record each group’s top three choices.
- present the information on a graph and discuss their findings.
As a class, critically evaluate the preferred options by completing the decision-making grid below. A decision making grid is a tool that can be used to help make financial decisions.
Decision Making Grid [PDF, 1.3 MB]
Record the choices of games or toys across the top cells of the grid. Then list the criteria that will inform their decision making in the left-hand cells. Prompt students to refer to the criteria or factors their group considered most important or most useful.
Criteria might include:
- Popularity
- Suitability for inside play
- Can pieces get lost?
- Group game
- Durability
- Value for money
- Price
As a class, work across the grid reaching a consensus on each score before recording it. Use a scoring range of 1–5, with 1 indicating "not good at all" and 5 indicating "excellent".
When the scoring is completed, students can add the scores to discover which items are the best buys.
| Card game | Guess Who? | Table tennis | Lego® | Battleships | Twister | Playdough | Indoor soccer set | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Suitable for inside play? | 5 | 5 | 2 | 5 | 5 | 2 | 5 | 1 |
| Popularity | 3 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 1 | 5 |
| Can lots of people play? | 3 | 2 | ||||||
| Challenging | 4 | |||||||
| Durability | 3 | |||||||
| Price | 5 | |||||||
| Total | 23 |
Links to home – Students can share the decision-making grid with families and whānau when making financial decisions at home. Families could use the grid to choose the most appropriate:
- bread
- new winter jacket
- takeaway meal
- birthday gift
Word wall
Start a word wall of subject-specific terms and phrases. Add new words to the wall as you work through each module. Vocabulary for module 1 includes:
- goods and services
- market
- purchase
- choices
- price
- cost
- value for money
- financial decision-making.