Our Families® 

Our Families® is designed to provide practical information about family members and their interdependence. This program is designed to comply with the 1st grade curriculum.

The goals of Families® are to:

• help the students better understand what constitutes a family. 

• help the students understand the difference between a need and a want. 

• increase the students' knowledge of places that provide a family's needs and wants. 

• help the students become more aware of the types of jobs family members hold. 

• heighten the students' awareness of how each person contributes to the well-being of the family. 

• make the students aware of the importance of education for future career development. 

Families®  Activities

Our Families emphasizes the roles people play in the local economy as well as how they work together to make the place they live a good place.

Activity One: Our Families  

The students better understand what a family is by studying a poster. They discover how people in a family are alike and different and how they work together to make the place where they live a good place. 

Key Learning Objective  The students will...

• identify what a family is 

• recognize how people live and work together in a family

Activity Two: Our Families' Needs and Wants

The students become aware that all families must have food, clothing, and shelter to live, and they begin to understand the difference between a need and a want. 

Key Learning Objective  The students will...

• explain the difference between a need and a want

Activity Three: Our Families' Jobs

The students learn how jobs provide for family members' needs and wants. They draw pictures of family members doing jobs. 

Key Learning Objective  The students will...

• define a job as work that needs to be done 

• identify jobs people do

Activity Four: Finding Our Families' Needs and Wants

The students use a floor map to discover where members of a family would go to obtain their needs and wants.

Key Learning Objective  The students will...

• interpret map symbols

• place various kinds of symbols for businesses and services on a map

• recognize how family members depend on various businesses to provide their needs and wants

Activity Five: Paying for Our Families' Needs and Wants

The students learn about the importance of working to pay for needs and wants. Through role play, they demonstrate working and paying for needs and wants. 

Key Learning Objective  The students will...

• describe various jobs at which people earn money

• recognize that families use money to satisfy their needs and wants.

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Our Families® enhances the students' learning of the following concepts and skills:

Concepts

• Business

• Choices

• Consumers

• Economic institutions

• Employment

• Family

• Incentives

• Income

• Interdependence

• Jobs

• Needs

• Resources

• Scarcity

• Skills

• Tools

• Voluntary exchange

• Wants

• Work

Skills

• Analyzing information

• Decision making

• Differentiating

• Drawing

• Following directions 

• Interpreting symbols

• Listening responsively

• Making observations

• Map reading

• Matching

• Teamwork

Our Families is a series of five activities recommended for students in grade 1. The average time for each activity is 30 minutes. Materials are packaged in a self-contained kit that includes detailed activity plans for the volunteer and materials for 30 students.

All JA programs have technology enhancements and are designed to support the skills and competencies outlined in the SCANS (Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills) report. These programs also augment the school-based, work-based, and connecting activities for communities with school-to-work initiatives.

  

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