A child’s look at wealth distribution

To begin our geography studies this year we are focusing on the plight of children around the world.  It has been a great study so far.  We are learning how much of the world is always hungry, how many have no place to live, how many have no clean water, etc.  A couple days ago we took a look at wealth distribution from Day 5 of our study.

To start with I drew 100 circles on a large paper to represent the world.  One penny was placed on each circle to represent an equal spread of the money to the world’s people.  I then had them gather up the coins and we distributed the money according to how wealth is distributed around the world.  I had them put 40 pennies on 40 spots to represent 40 % of the world.

Then I had them stack piles of 30 pennies to place on two circles.  Once those pennies were placed there were no more.  The other 58 people had no pennies.  It was a great visual demonstration to show the disparity between North America and many other places in the world.  We talked about what a great difference it would make to give one of our “pennies” to someone who had none and what an even greater difference it would make to give more than one penny.

I am loving this study.  My kids are enjoying learning about the world.  I’ve seen their appreciation grow for things we often take for granted.  I want them to grow up with the perspective that they are blessed even if they are far from rich by this country’s standards.  And because they are blessed I want them to understand that they are in a position to do something to help those who have little.