Hello my Omschooligan friends! I promised you interactive ways to use your mad money math skills and here they are! Here's a rubric to practice marketing and business math in real world situations. It's perfect for elementary school, middle school or high school. Here are cross-curricular business math lesson plans with recycling connections. Use these business math lesson plans to teach environmental science in Earth Month. Students design, manufacture and sell inventions made from recycled materials.
Business Math & Marketing: Recycled Inventions Makers' Fair
Pro-Tip: This unit can be easily scaled to fit elementary, middle, or high school levels by adjusting the complexity of the math and economics components!
Unit Overview
Students will design, manufacture, and market their own inventions using only recycled, repurposed or reclaimed materials. This cross-curricular unit ties together environmental science, math, history, and the arts, while building higher-order thinking skills through a hands-on "Makers' Fair Market Day."
Target Audience: School, Homeschool, 4-H, Scouts, or Junior Achievement
Seasonal Focus: Perfect for Earth Month, Year end or Back to School activities
Core Skill Focus: Analysis, application, synthesis, and evaluation
Subject Integrations
Science & Environmental Science:
Discuss eco-friendly, sustainable design and how to clean up the environment by repurposing old into new.
Plan and organize inventions using items found in the recycle bin or reused household items.
Teacher Resource: Materials ListCardboard: Cereal boxes, shipping boxes, toilet paper and paper towel tubes, and egg cartons.
Plastics: Clean water bottles, packing peanuts, milk jugs, yogurt cups, and bottle caps.
Metals: Clean tin cans (with safe, filed edges), nuts, bolts, hooks, washers, screws, old tools and aluminum foil scraps.
Broken small appliances and kitchen gadgets. Pots and pans, utensils, flatware
Paper & Packaging: Old magazines, junk mail, newspapers, wallpaper sample books, and bubble wrap.
Craft Embellishments: Used gift wrap and bows, leftover ribbons, buttons from old clothes, feathers and artificial flowers from old arrangements, wine corks.
Fabric and notions scraps: fabric and felt scraps from repurposed old clothing, carpet samples.
Assorted "missing pieces" from games, play sets, puzzles, broken toys
Explore ways to repurpose items into intriguing new uses.
- Technology & Engineering:
- Differentiate between primary inventions (e.g., a hand can opener) and secondary inventions (e.g., an improvement like an electric can opener).
- Consider situations which you haven't found a suitable too.
- Now invent it.
- Or create a completely fantastical invention just for fun.
Graphic Design & Art:
Discuss "found art" in which only recycled materials are used.
Found Art Integration What is Found Art? Found art (or objet trouvé) describes art created from the use of undisguised but often modified objects or products that are not normally considered materials from which art is made. To explore examples for your classroom, consider these online resources: Learn about the history of the readymade at the Tate guide. View curated examples of everyday items turned into thought-provoking sculptures at Art UK. Probably the most iconic is Marcell Duchamp's "Fountain"Sketch the initial design.
Assemble a list of materials needed. Teachers, see below for a list of items to provide.
Decorate the invention using recycled embellishments.
Design marketing materials (posters, flyers, or billboards).
Literature & Social Studies:
Create a poster, timeline, or presentation showing global variations of the invention throughout history.
Read a biography of a historical inventor related to the student's chosen product.
- Writing & Drama:
- Write a 1-minute commercial promoting the invention's benefit.
- Perform the commercial with props and cardboard backdrops.
Music:
- Compose a short, catchy advertising jingle highlighting the sustainable materials used.
Math Applications: Makers' Fair Market Day
Production Costs: Students will establish a fair market retail price which will cover her labor, time, cost of accessing reclaimed materials (amount dad spent on gas to take her to junkyard) and any purchased materials plus give her a profit.
Budgeting & Accounting: Students track sales, inventory, discounts, and extra costs on a teacher-made balance sheet.
Transactions: Students my use play money, token economy system or real currency to practice real-world transactions and make change.
Student Market Day Balance Sheet
Pro-Tip: Remember to price your item to cover the cost of your materials and your time, while still offering a fair deal to your customers!
1. Production Cost Worksheet
| Materials / Labor | Description | Cost / Value |
| Reclaimed Materials | Cardboard, plastic, or scraps from the recycle bin | $0.25 per item |
| Hardware / Glue / Paint | Consumables (glue, tape, fasteners from home) | $0.25 per item |
| Production Time | 1 hour spent making each individual invention (10 per hour, at $5.00 per hour | $.50 |
| Total Production Cost | Your total cost to make the invention | **$1.00** |
### 2. Profit and Loss Statement
| Sales & Expense Items | Amount |
| Retail Price Set | $3.00 |
| Less Production Cost | -$1.00 |
| Net Profit Per Unit | $2 |
### 3. Market Day Ledger
| Customer Name / Item Sold | Quantity | Price Each | Total Revenue |
| Parents | 3 | $3 | $9 |
| Classmates | 2 | $3 | $6 |
| Total Earnings (minus expenses) | 15 | -5 | **$10** |
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