See more of the Virtual Museum of Canada
image image
Mail Box Before E-commerce: A History of Canadian 
Mail-order Catalogues image
Mail box
Mail box
image
image Main Menu Sources Contributors Travelling Exhibition Feedback image Table of Contents
image
image For Teachers For Collectors - For Teachers - For Students
image
image For Teachers
image
Topics
Fashion to Furnishings
Capturing Customers
Company Histories
From 
Order to Delivery
image
Timeline
Catalogues (1880-1975)
Games and Activities
image
  

What Could You Buy with a Dollar?

Grades
1-3

Subjects
Mathematics, Social Studies, Language Arts (reasoning and critical thinking, listening, and oral communication), Economics (money)

Themes
Needs and Wants, Change, Decision-making, Economics

Resources
Historic catalogue from this site; overhead projector (optional)

Description
This is a new kind of dollar store! Imagine it is the fall of 1918, and you have just received the Eaton's Fall and Winter 1918-19 catalogue.
What could you buy with a dollar?

  1. Using the guidelines in Introduction to the Resources, print out one or two pages from the Eaton's Fall and Winter 1918-19 catalogue (links suggested below, but many other pages are appropriate too).
  2. Project these pages onto a screen or wall or photocopy for individual or group use.
     
  3. Ask students to identify what they could buy with a dollar to spend. Some of the actual prices may seem surprising from a present-day viewpoint and students may benefit from a class discussion concerning why the relative prices of goods seem so inexpensive by today's standards.

 

   
top of page
image
image image