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LESSON: SATURDAY SANCOCHO
Lesson Summary
Making
chicken sancocho is a traditional Saturday treat for Maria Lili. But
when Papa announces one morning that there is no money for sancocho,
Maria Lili and her grandmother go to market to barter for the
ingredients.
Concept: Trade and Money
Definition: People trade (exchange) with each other
to get the goods and services they want. To make trade easier, people use
money.
Comprehension Questions
Why did
Maria Lili and Mama Ana go to the market?
They went to buy ingredients for chicken
sancocho.
Since eggs were not an ingredient in
sancocho, why did Mama Ana say, "Then we will use the eggs to make
sancocho."?
They had no money to buy the ingredients. They
would use the eggs to barter for other ingredients.
What is barter?
Barter is
trading (exchanging) goods or services without using money.
List all the goods that Maria Lili and
Mama Ana acquired at the market through trading.
Plantains,
cassava, corn, carrots, onions, tomatoes, cilantro, garlic, cumin,
chicken.
Explain why bartering was sometimes
difficult in the story.
Some of the people did not agree on the
produce to be exchanged. For voluntary trade to take place, each
person must want what the other person has and be willing to trade for
it.
Compare trading goods (barter) to
using money.
Barter requires that each person is willing to trade
for the good the other person has; with money, this is not necessary since
money can be exchanged for any good.
Is it true that both people in a trade
expect to benefit?
Yes, if the trade is voluntary, each person ends
up with a good or service he values more than the one he traded
away. Hence, both people benefit. Voluntary trade is not a
zero-sum activity, with a winner and a loser.
In the story, Mama Ana "haggled" with
Dona Petrona, who had chickens for sale. What does it mean to
haggle? Do we haggle in our own economy?
Haggle means to argue back and forth about the
price of a good or service that you want to buy from a seller. In our
economy we don't haggle about most goods we buy in stores, but we do often
haggle when buying an expensive good, such as a car or house. The
time it takes to haggle may very well be worth it!
Other Concepts: Goods and Services,
Economic
Wants, Producers, Consumers, Market | 
