We had a sale yesterday at our Roots & Shoots meeting. It was pretty small because 2 of our core 5 families couldn't make it but it was fun. Bridget sold almost all her stuff. It turns out she's quite the saleswoman :-) She bought a picture from her friend L and a slinky and some cookies from C. The other kids (including Owen) didn't sell anything so it was mainly the three girls hawking their wares. Owen bought lollipops and cookies. The rest of the time we moms chatted and the kids ran around on the playground and had a blast.

On the way home we had a good lesson *for me* in math and unschooling. I've heard often how money is good for math but for whatever reason, my daughter hadn't been into it much til now. I mean she likes money but it didn't seem to be "mathy" to her. Yesterday on the way home from the sale she asked me to explain change to her (again) and asked me various questions about it. They seemed simple (if something cost 8 cents and someone gave me a dime how much change would they get?) and at first I didn't understand why she didn't get it. If it was just numbers she'd know the answer no problem, so why didn't she get it when it was money? (not that I said this to her by the way but it was in my head). Then as I'm talking to her, I could see (ok, feel - I was driving LOL!) the lightbulb go off in her head. I told her to think of it as pennies. If you have a dime, you basically have 10 pennies so if something is 8 pennies you give back the extra 2. The lightbulb went off and suddenly she *understood*. She chatted about money and asked me to answer problems half the way home. THIS is one of the great benefits of homeschooling. Being there for the lightbulb moments is just too cool. I'm too selfish to give that honor to some stranger who has a classroom of 20 kids and probably wouldn't notice it anyway when one of those kids suddenly "gets it".

Meanwhile, the house is a mess :-P We had fiber arts monday (tons o' fun as usual!) and then the sale yesterday and though they were fun, both drained me for some reason. A drained mom means only the really basic stuff (like cooking food and cleaning dishes) gets done. Monday night Bridget made bookmarks out of old cards (to sell at the sale - really cute, with tassels and cut objects hanging off them and everything). Apparently cutting up cards is a lot of fun and it continued into last night. Now the backroom floor is littered with little bits of cards and pieces of yarn (from the tassels and some leftover from Bridget's finger knitting). I didn't think of it til this morning but I really should have asked them to do this on the hardwood floor where I could easily sweep it up. Instead the bits are all on carpet so we'll have to pick up all the big ones (and the long pieces of yarn) before vacuuming.

In other news, Bridget is now decorating the walls of her room with my blessing. I had some talks with other unschooling moms and re-read some old unschooling posts and here I am, letting my kid write graffiti all over her room. Eh, she's gonna do it anyway, I might as well take the stress out of it and not fight her over it (or, more to the point *stop* fighting her over it). What's that Barbara Coloroso thing? Is it dangerous? Is it morally . . . something? It's just not a big deal. Well, it IS a big deal. To her. She's thrilled :-)

Owen is suddenly into being read to a lot which would be really cool except he wants the same books over and over and over. I don't mean in a day, I mean I finish the book and he says "again!" and I turn back to the beginning and start over. I'm gritting my teeth and reminding myself that this is not only normal, it's actually a path to reading. How many times can I read Going Batty though? Sometimes it's Magic Schoolbus books too but the Batman book has some sort of addictive draw to it. We have other Batman books but so far this one is the only one he asks for.