Never Say Never!

I must admit this blog post would have had a different title had it been written last Monday evening. Something more like Never Again! described my mood that night regarding a social studies project I was doing with my second graders.

As part of our study of economics and communities I often have my students learn key terms like goods and services, producers and consumers, and needs and wants by participating in a class business and having a popcorn sale. The students package small bags of popcorn, create posters to advertise our sale, sell the popcorn and practice making change, and then count the money and figure out our profit (and how to Save, Spend, and Share the money wisely). It’s always been a great project: the kids have fun and learn a lot.

In the past, I purchased bags of popped popcorn from a local retailer. However, they stopped carrying these a few years ago and I haven’t been able to find any suitable (cost effective) replacement, so I discontinued the project.

When a school family offered the use of their popcorn popper I decided to revive the project this year, not realizing how long it would take to pop enough popcorn to sell to our whole school. We started the machine early Monday morning. The kids were excited to see the popcorn popping and it was fun … for about 15 minutes. After 45 minutes we had popped enough popcorn for about 18 bags (our goal was 300!), the little container of oil/corn had slipped out of it’s lock twice (spilling unpopped kernels all over the machine), and I had burned my arm.  We moved on to Plan B.

Plan B consisted of my popping almost two cases of popcorn after school Monday, finally finishing just before 9:00 at night with 5 large bags of popped popcorn ready to be packaged by the students the next morning, and my vow that I would never (never, ever!) do this again! At that point I never wanted to see popcorn again!

But then …

- the kids came to school on Tuesday morning, eager to package the popcorn. (They did a great job, making 285 bags to sell - close enough to our 300 bag goal.)

- Rose Park students and staff lined up to buy the popcorn. (We sold out!)

- And this year, instead of separating our profit into 3 categories (Save, Spend, Share), we decided to Share all of it with a fellow second grade student who has numerous medical expenses. Because of this, a number of Rose Park students and staff contributed extra donations to increase our profit.

- We raised $185.50 to help a school family and show our Christian community, demonstrating our school theme by “Living the Truth.”

And so, when I weigh one long, frustrating afternoon/evening of popping popcorn against all of these benefits …

I change the title of my blog post!