Shopping projects enable the teacher to introduce and teach a wide range of subjects, skills and knowledge in an integrated way. Beyond the basic math skills to calculate and work with prices, students explore and learn about budgeting, the influence of advertising and branding, how to compare and evaluate products and make informed choices, and their own consumer decision-making processes.
Everyday living shopping projects allow the students to go into a grocery store and use their math skills to interpret the data they find. Ask the students each to select three different everyday food items. At the grocery store, they record the cost of three different brands of each item, along with the available sizes of the product. One of the brands selected should be the house brand if it's available. Back in the classroom, the students create a table with the item brand name, its total cost and the cost per unit weight. They can calculate the mean, median and mode of the prices. Ask them to identify the best value brand of each product, and discuss the effects of brand names and advertising on people's purchase decisions.
Personal item shopping projects allow the students to examine the decisions they make, or want to make, about buying their own items. Using magazines, catalogs and online shopping websites as sources, give each student the same imaginary budget and ask them to spend the budget on one or more items they would like. Examples to suggest include clothing, books, computers, game systems and other consumer electronics. They should select three options for each item, and be prepared to explain why they made their choice. Introduce discussions about quantity versus quality, brand versus no-name items and hidden costs such as taxes and extended warranties. In addition, compare each student's decision-making process and talk about the influence of peer pressure and advertising.
Project the student's shopping into the future by asking them to plan and budget a move into a new, unfurnished apartment. Give them an appropriate budget and ask them to develop a dream board of their ideal apartment, containing pictures and photos from magazines and catalogs. An interesting variation on this is to have students work in pairs or small teams, which introduces the elements of compromise and consensus. Use the student presentations of their dream boards to discuss informed choice, the differences between wants and needs, and priority setting. An alternative to this project is to ask the students to investigate buying a car, from exploring the many makes and models to selecting the right car to budgeting for the down payment and monthly car loan payments.