elle’s social studies fair project...or parent jail

Elle had to choose to do the science or social studies fair at school this year. We found this great book on the history of the Monopoly game, which is one of Elle’s favorite things to play. So she picked SS, and thus began our first adventure into working on this type of project. It’s so much work, and as Chris put it, parent jail. We didn’t want to do the work for her, but giving her guidance and motivation was a constant job.

The story is a pretty good one about how a woman named Lizzie Magie created the Land Lord’s game and got a patent for it, which was pretty rare for a woman and for a board game at the time. Her game had two ways to play, and her purpose was to show how unfair the it was to poor city workers who kept having their rent raised by rick land owners who were buying up all the property. Her game was popular, but the Parker Brothers turned it down. Fans kept play it and creating different versions. Eventually a man named Charles Darrow played a friend’s game, and decided to create his own version, and called it Monopoly, then tried to sell it to the Parkers Brothers. Eventually, they had to buy Lizzie’s patent for $500, and Charles Darrow ended making tons of money.

Elle decided to test one of Lizzie’s original ideas for her project. This involved playing lots of Monopoly. The project got turned in, and she ended up with Third place in her category. One cool thing about this project was Elle getting a chance to see my Grandma’s Monopoly game from 1947.