Still working on your holiday shopping? Yeah, me too. Prefer to sit down and read an intriguing book about the history of shopping instead of actually doing it? Me too!

Spending Spree: The History of American Shopping by Cynthia Overbeck Bix tells all about shopping in the United States and how it has evolved over the last two centuries.

And of course we have some fantastic FREE teaching tools to help you use this book in your classroom. Bartering Experiment invites students to set up a barter system in their own lives, putting a non-monetary value on chores, use of possessions, and favors. Is a one-day loan of that skirt worth an hour with the TV remote? Would you trade your favorite video game for your friend’s black jacket?

Then check out the CCSS Creative Writing Project. This writing prompt invites students to take on another shopping role–the role of salesperson. What would it have been like to be a peddler in the 1800s or a traveling salesperson in the early 1900s? After writing about a day in the life of the salesperson, students will create an advertisement to show off their wares.

Each season, our editorial staff puts our heads together to come up with great extras to help you get more out of our new series and titles. To download free resources for a book or series, find the book on our website. If you haven’t registered with us, please do so at the upper right corner of the page. On future visits, you’ll need to sign in to download files. Then look in the right-hand column of the page for the eSource logo. Just under the Font Lens, you’ll see the downloadable eSource files. Click on an individual file or on “download all.”