Rationing

Beginning Sunday all students will be participating in rationing. The purpose of the rationing is for students to experience what sacrifices the civilians on the home front were making during the WWII. The rules were explained to them today and after the moaning and groaning died down, we put the details in their planners. The rationing has two parts.

Part 1 involves the conservation of wheat, sugar, and meat for the troops. A day of the week would be designated as a “wheatless day” or a “sugarless day”.  Mondays are meatless, Tuesdays are wheatless, Wednesdays are sugarless, and Thursdays are dairy free.  This means they are being asked to pack a lunch that does not include the designated item on those days. They can have extra credit if they can also do it for breakfast and dinner but it is not required. We will continue this for three weeks, beginning next Monday.

Part 2  involves the rationing of items in high demand to prevent hoarding, price gauging, etc. Our version of this is designed to help students experience the difficulty of making decisions based upon very limited resources. Students will be given a ration book with pages of ration tickets. Each ticket is good for the item stated upon it. One page will contain tickets for 1 text each. One page will contain tickets for 1 3 – 5 minute phone call each. One page will contain tickets for 10 minutes of TV viewing. One page will contain tickets for 10 minutes of computer time. The last page will contain tickets for 10 minutes of video games. Tickets may not be traded, swapped, bought, duplicated, recycled, saved, rolled over, or bartered in any way. Parents are asked to collect tickets as they are used. Students can earn extra ration tickets by doing extra work in the classroom. Students may lose ration tickets for not turning in homework on time. I know this will be painful and will result in lots of whining but it is an excellent learning opportunity and only lasts two weeks.

Here are some quotes from families that have survived the 7th grade rationing project:

"It's is going really well I'm so proud of her, because I would've given up the 1st night. My student is determined!! There have been a couple of benefits... She tried a food for dinner, that normally she wouldn't, she is spending more of her free time with me! (yay) and it is inspiring us to try to challenge ourselves. I think the hardest part for her, is less time on the computer, which is forcing her to go outside even more & play games with us too! It's all good here"

"Our student has been following through and eating only what she is allowed to eat.  Yes, it means changing the dinner menu a little.  No ration tickets have been used as of yet.  She has been spending her time playing outside or reading.  A good learning moment for all."

"Although our son truly thinks he is dying we enjoyed the card game time together.  I think it is so funny-he's not ever allowed to do nintendo on the weekdays anyway, but for some reason he thinks it's major deprivation!  :-)  No-in reality-it is the VERY BEST way to teach how hard rationing must have been.  I applaud your creativity.  Wheatless was a challenge!  We are having a blast doing it though, and we are humbled by the Holocaust stories and things we are hearing."