Money, money, money, money. MONEY!

Dang. I'm behind in my blogging. I have a bunch of stuff I want to write about, though. It just never happens. I need to keep this up, so that 1. I don't feel guilty and 2. the Salad has a record of their childhood. 'Cause God knows 1. baby books were never Made 2. I have a Memory like a sieve and 3. I haven't printed out pictures in 3 years, 3 Months.

Anyway, back in the beginning of October, we studied the letter M. I used Money to base our study on, thinking the Salad would love playing with change. I was right. To begin our studies, I dumped the giant change jar that R and I keep in our bedroom and let the Salad fill their change purses. We took our Money bags down to the kitchen table, where we sorted quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies. We took one coin in each denomination and glued them to a piece of cardboard. Then we took crayons and Made coin rubbings.
The next day, we conducted a scientific experiment. What best cleans pennies? Water and soap? Nope. Vinegar and salt? Nope. Turns out, if you've got a bunch of dirty pennies, grab a giant bottle of ketchup and squeeze. Chemical reaction between the copper and the acid cleans 'em right up. The Salad was hesitant at first, looking at Me like I had lost My Mind when I told them to get their hands in the ketchup and start rubbing. But once they had carte blanche, they dug right in. After quiet time on Wednesday, we read a few simple preschool books about Money transactions. They went like this - You want something that I own. You give Me Money. I give you My goods. In this case the "goods" was a bag of candy that I hide in the cabinet for the occasional treat. Then I had the kids gather their Money back in their change purses. I spread out the candy and we played candy store. They looked over My goods, decided what they wanted, asked how Much it was, and counted the correct amount of pennies. Seriously, we did this for 30 Minutes. And by the way, I am an awesome business person, because I was getting like 7 pennies for 1 M&M. Donald Trump, your next Apprentice is on her way!
The next Morning, we took what Money they had left and headed to the bank. The Salad was thrilled to dump change into a coin counter, take their receipt and head to the teller for cash. With our dollars bills in hand, we drove straight to 5 Below. R's birthday was in the Middle of October and I thought this was a perfect opportunity to put our studies into action. M had been saying for a Month that he wanted to get R a rubber duck for his birthday, A headed right for the sunglass display and S thought binoculars would be the perfect gift.

As an real time update to this post, I want to note that everyday for the last Month, the Salad has asked if the Candy store is open. It very rarely is ;)