Cultural Ingredients Story

Remember, if you want the extra credit you have to read and discuss this post with an adult.

It's interesting how our culture permeates all aspects of our lives.  The technology you are using to read this right now is an example of our standard of living.  You're reading it in English - proving that you are both literate (another indicator of a high standard of living) and that you can speak this language: another ingredient of culture.  The fact that you are reading it tells me you care about your education (or the education of your child) which indicates your values. 

Ah, social studies, how I love thee.  You are my North, my South, my East, my West.  My working week and my Sunday rest.  You are everywhere, and I don't know where I would be without you.

Most classes finished up the list of cultural ingredients today.  You can ask them about standard of living.  We talked about cars, and tvs, but we also talked about more complex examples like infant mortality rate and literacy rate.  See if they remember what these are.  It's ok if they don't remember, it was just introduced.  If you're up for it, and you haven't spent too much time reading this, you could click on those two links.  They'll take you to the CIA World Factbook.  It lists countries with the highest and lowest infant mortality rate, and shows literacy rate alphabetically.  There are also definitions.

The students also started a story today.  It could have been about anything, but they had to include 5 of the ingredients of culture.  I saw a lot of good ones.  Some were non-fiction, but we also had some from the perspective of aliens, dogs, dolphins, and pirates, of course.

You're probably reading this because you want extra credit.  In order to get the extra credit for reading and discussing the post write a couple sentences on a scrap piece of paper.  Tell me how the discussion went, and maybe what all you talked about.  And tell me what your parents/grandparents/foster-parents/etc... thought about your bellwork story.  Then, have them sign the paper.  Adult-type-people: by signing the paper you're saying, "yes, we really did read and discuss this."