The holiday season coincided perfectly with our economics unit. I can't think of a better time to discuss wants versus needs. I assessed students' ability to differentiate between wants and needs by finding examples of each in ads from Kroger, Kohl's, Walmart, and Toys-R-Us. After students found an example of a want and a need, they added their pictures to Santa's bags pictured below.
Idea courtesy of this blog: http://krazyforkindergarten.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2010-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&updated-max=2011-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&max-results=12