7th grade Humanities students participated in an exciting activity that revealed economic lessons — Kool Katz! The students were divided into three groups, or “factories”, and were tasked with “making” Kool Katz drawings. Each member of the team was assigned a different part of the image. The students made these Kool Katz in three separate rounds, which had different conditions to meet.

In Round 1, each factory simply needed to produce five Kool Katz. It wasn’t a competition, and when each group finished, they were “paid” three Skittles. Everyone got paid! In Round 2, each group needed to produce five Kool Katz as fast as possible, and only the quickest team received payment of five Skittles. In this round, quality didn’t matter — all that mattered was that it was done. In our last round, the teams had to produce five more Kool Katz. This time, however, their drawings would be judged; whichever team was able to balance being quick with also making good products would earn seven Skittles as a reward.

The students LOVED this fast-paced simulation! When we finished our rounds, we discussed different economic models: command, market, and mixed. We thought back at our Kool Katz experience and tried to decipher which economic system was symbolized in each round. This ended in a wonderful discussion about the pros and cons of each, and we made real-world connections to fast fashion, private industry, free enterprise, and wealth inequality.