Buy, Produce, Sell, Oh My!

A big focus of our Farms Make Vermont unit in first grade is to learn about the economic cycle of "buy, produce, sell."  During this past week first graders started learning about that cycle using an apple farm as our first example.  Through our discussion, and with the use of our knowledge as to how an apple farm works, students discovered that the farmer needs to buy many things in order to start up, or continue being, a prosperous apple farm; each farm needs to produce something, depending on what kind of farm it is; and the farmer needs to be able to sell some of his or her products to be able to then buy things for the farm to keep going on through another year.  Soon, we will also be learning about the differences between "wants" and "needs", which is an important consideration for the farmer when he or she gets the money from selling their products.  

Also, be on the lookout for information coming home soon regarding an upcoming field trip to a dairy farm!