A few days before Thanksgiving a gentleman stepped into the school office and offered to pay for one of the Thanksgiving baskets which the school sends out to poor families in the neighborhood. No one seemed to know the exact value of one of the baskets, so Grade Three was asked to make the estimate.
This could have been done by an adult in a few minutes, but it would have been done no more accurately than the children were able to do it after having made a careful study of market lists. The exercise also furnished an excellent child’s aim for the arithmetic lesson. The class felt its responsibility and was anxious to do good work.
The list of things generally put into one of the baskets was given to the class. The children decided upon the average price of each item. This called for an appreciation of the word average. The work was done orally with class discussion. For instance, when the price of a squash was asked, one child said “twelve cents,” another, “eighteen cents,” etc. The class finally agreed that a medium-sized squash would cost about fifteen cents.
| Small squash | 12¢ |
| Large squash | 18¢ |
| 2 ) 30¢ | |
| 15¢ |
The child who recorded the price of the squash on the board wrote fifteen cents—$.15. Before the lesson was over, several children had a little trouble in writing cents without dimes ($.06), keeping the money columns straight, using the dollar mark and decimal point, etc. With suggestions from other members of the class, the list was complete.
In the item “6 lb. of beef @ 16¢” the class found that it was necessary to multiply by six. As they had never had the six table, I did not expect them to be able to do it, but it chanced that one boy knew his six table and did the work readily.
Marion Thalman.
Nov. 23, 1909.
The Cost of a Thanksgiving Dinner