Milton third-graders learn about economics

The fourth pig in the parable of the big bad wolf has his pick of at least a dozen houses, built from stone, plastic, foam, Popsicle sticks - even sugar cubes - as part of an economics project of Susan Passwaters’ third-grade class.

Eager to show off their clever creations, the students displayed the houses in the front hall of Milton Elementary School last week.

Finn Davis’ house, which he said required eating lots of Popsicles, is gray with a rock foundation. “It’s actually a post box I had at home…It took me the whole 10 days,” he said, pointing out the plastic windows he installed.

Gemini McCloskey made a round house of sugar cubes and added ice cream sprinkles on top for a roof.

She explained capital resources are made by people or machines, natural ones come from the earth and human resources are people – herself and her parents.

Ronika Mifflin said the class had to use an example of each kind of resource.

Her project’s human resources were she and her brother, who lent a hand in the creation. Carly Juarez used a soda bottle and covered it with rocks, using cattails for the top.

Shawn Gray said sugar cubes were her building material of choice because she’d seen her stepdad make a whole castle of them. She made a pig of Play-Doh to inhabit her sugar-cube castle and added a crocodile to the moat around it to defend against the big bad wolf. She said human resources were the easiest to find; the hardest was capital. Her brother lent a hand constructing the pig, crocodile and the fish that swim in the moat, she said.

The fourth little pig could choose to hide out from the wolf in style in Victoria Brittingham’s house, which has its own disco ball. Passwaters said students had to build the houses and present their projects to the class, identifying which kind of resource each building item is. She said earlier in the economics unit, students made lemonade in class and discussed each kind of resource that went into creating the drink.