Kidschool Today

I'm very new to this home educating thing, but I am finding that I love it.  I call our learning sessions kidschool, and we do them five days a week for the duration of the morning.  The hardest part was deciding to set aside that time for school.  Once I made the commitment to myself, though, it's been easy.  As soon as breakfast is over and everyone is dressed, I usually give myself 30min. to accomplish anything else that I feel is necessary and then we have kidschool until lunch.  The kids are loving it, and they can't wait until we start school every morning!  I've felt a huge amount of peace enter my life now that I'm doing what I know I'm supposed to be doing with my children.  Interestingly enough, the children have been more obedient and cheerful too.  But the most amazing thing is that I've found that I'm more productive even though I don't have those morning hours to do my other work.  This has really been a blessing for our family.

Anyway, on to our success for today...  This morning we played 'grocery shopping' and it was a hit!  The kids usually want snacks during school time, and I am finding that I can often use those snacks to make some hands on learning.  So today I prepared a variety of snacks and set them out on the counter.  Each snack had a price tag attached.  I asked the kids if they would like to go shopping for the snacks and they were very enthusiastic, but they had a problem.  They didn't have any money!  So we talked about earning money and they asked me how they could earn some money for our 'grocery store'.  They did some quick chores and for each earned some coins.  We then added up our coins and headed to the 'grocery store'.  Logan chose his snacks first.  He wanted one of each, so we added up the total, re-added his coins, and made his change.  He'd earned enough for everything.  Annie also wanted to buy everything, but when we added the cost, she came up short.  At first she was devastated, but she succeeded (with assistance) in problem solving.  I suggested that she could earn more money, and she jumped at the chance to do another chore in which she earned just enough more.  While the kids enjoyed their snacks, we discussed the value of working hard to earn the things that we need and want, and Logan began making plans for the next time we played 'grocery store'.  Next time he wants to buy clothes!  :)