Market Days

It was Market Days this week.  One mom from our CC group wanted the kids to have an outlet to both buy and sell items.  The kids were allowed to sell anything they made and there were all sorts of homemade items.  Necklaces, knitted bookmarks, stress balls, tortillas, brownies, decorated pens, etc.  Our boys wanted to participate so we made brownies and chocolate-chip cookies.  The boys helped make the brownies and did a great job, except for being a little heavy-handed with the M&M's on top.  We sold our brownies for $0.25 each.  It seemed reasonable because they weren't that big.  We sold the cookies for $0.25 for a bag of three, which was a steal really, but I wanted to make it easy on the boys to collect the money and make change.

We had to arrive early to set up our table.  There was early interest in the brownies, but by the time the school day began, we had sold all but one bag of the cookies.  At the end of the day we sold everything but one brownie.  The boys actually earned $10.00 profit, but they did not take home $10.00.  They moseyed around to the other tables and kept coming back to their cash box asking me for money.  By the end of the day, between the three of them, they bought two bags of chocolate-chip tortillas, three stress balls, one clay pen (pen decorated with hardened clay), three bags of dinosaur cookies, and a painted rock with the word "Love" on it.  And they would have bought much, much more.  So, what they actually brought home was $2.00 total.  Todd and I tried to give them a business lesson that evening.  They listened dutifully, but I don't think they would have changed any part of the day except they would have bought more.

For science this week, we made a volcano.  I had been putting off this lesson for a couple of days because I knew the experiment that went with it.  We made a "volcano."  We used a water bottle with newspaper wrapped around it as the mountain.  We put some baking soda at the bottom of the bottle and poured some vinegar in.  At first we weren't getting much reaction and I noticed that our vinegar expired nearly two years ago.  The new vinegar helped some, but we weren't getting big explosions.  Finally, we forgot about the measurements that were in the book and we just dumped a lot of baking soda in the bottle and poured in a lot of vinegar.  It worked better.

After the volcano, the boys played with the vinegar and baking soda for a long time.  It was a mess, but a fun one.  Fortunately, Caroline had put herself down for a nap and slept through the whole thing, which helped in that there weren't three kids on the table making a mess.

For history we have read a lot about the Vikings and the lands they invaded.  We made Viking ships.

We also made Alfred the Great statutes.

Every history lesson, Josiah's first words tend to be: "Is there a coloring page?" followed by, "What are we going to make?"  He's an activity-oriented kid.

One morning, the kids wanted to make a banner in the boys room.  It was my understanding from overhearing their conversation that they were making a banner on their wall with their artwork.  At least that was the original plan.  But as the project wore on, all three of them kept coming downstairs for more and more artwork.  I checked on them, and they were no longer making a banner, but a wall.  A LOT of tape was used in this project which eventually fell under its own weight not too long after it was completed/abandoned.

Henry did better at Awana this week.  When I picked him up and he was telling me about his night, he happily announced, "I didn't even cry once."  We'll take it!

Caroline has been climbing the tree in our front yard when we take our morning break on school days.  She loves climbing it and just hanging out watching the boys ride bikes or play frisbee.  With her climbing skills, some days it is hard to believe she is only three.


The boys surprised me one day while I was reading to them.  They have associated reading with eating because I always read the chapter books to them while they eat their lunch.  This particular day, they were eating our new apple straws.  They are veggie straws, but apple flavored.  I'm reading and I hear the boys say they were smoking their apple straws!  What??!!  Todd and I can only figure that they have seen our new neighbors out smoking several times a day and that's where it's coming from.  Now, we pretended to smoke as kids, but that was the good old days when they sold kids candy cigarettes.  The best kind were those that had confectioner's sugar in them and you could make them "puff smoke."  We do need to tell them the dangers of smoking.  I was so surprised at the moment that I only stopped them from what they were doing, and then continued reading.

The kids are in for a surprise this week with a visit from Nana & Grandad.  They know they are coming, but they don't know when they are coming.  (They know it's soon, though, as they watch us clean our house a little more than usual.)  :)