Snack Mix Assembly Line

Over the past week we've been studying needs & wants, goods & services, and producers & consumers. To culminate our Economics unit, the students participated in a snack mix assembly line. To help introduce the idea of an assembly line, we watched that hilarious clip from the "I Love Lucy" show where she and Ethel work at the candy factory.

We discussed how a real assembly line is designed to work (unlike the antics of Lucy and Ethel :) and how we were going to use the process to produce our own snack mix. Each student had a job either spooning items in the bag (white & dark chocolate chips, Golden Grahams cereal, Cookie Crisp cereal, Kix cereal, & marshmallows), labeling & zipping the bags, or team supervisor (in charge of monitoring workers, materials, and quality control). We divided into two teams and tried to see who could produce ten bags first. The kids had a blast and got a hands-on opportunity to experience being a producer and producing a good. They also got to be a consumer when they took the snack mix home to share with their families. Since I have a student teacher right now, I got to participate in the assembly line myself. What fun we had!!!

Afterwards, we reflected on the activity and the students completed a response activity sheet. I love activities like this where we all get to participate in fun, meaningful learning experiences. :)