Saturday, March 8, 2008

Ahhh, Saturday.

Love the weekends, especially when we don't have any extra plans or commitments, other than church on Sunday.

The hands-on homeschool day went OK yesterday from my perspective. We read this fun little picture book about Thomas Jefferson, had macaroni and cheese (homemade - I don't think Kraft sold it in the blue box back in 1800), French fries, homemade ice cream, and "love apples" (tomatoes) - all foods that TJ introduced or popularized in America over 200 years ago and that we stil enjoy today! The kids also made lanterns out of tin cans, wrote letters with quills and ink made from laundry bluing, sealed them with wax from a candle, and a few other little activities.

One of my attributes which is almost always in high gear is frugality for lots of reasons. Based on things that my kids were saying (repeating from me or coming up with on their own) I decided recently, that I need to be a little less verbal about it. But since it is such a part of my life, it is probably going to come up here...frequently! Such as the previous post. And now this one.

Here you see little G with his glue gun and popsicle sticks. He bought the glue gun and some gluesticks himself about 7 months ago. There were 200 gluesticks in his stocking at Christmas, and that is the second box of 1000 popsicle sticks, and it is now empty. His current project is building a model of Lewis' and Clark's keelboat that is going to be big enough to use up most of another box. About one month ago though, his sister B decided she needed a glue gun too and picked one up for herself. (They are "low-temp" and so far no burns. One was even left plugged in while we were gone for an extended time - days, eek - and didn't burn the house down. Not recommending this and thanking God for watching out for us, but just illustrating that they haven't proven to be terribly dangerous so far.) He has been sharing gluesticks and she has used some of that box of sticks, too. This is just one of their many hobbies/craft activities. They also like making things with beads, painting, creating things with felt, etc., etc., etc. I take full responsibility for this. But one day as they were plowing through project after project consuming resources at a somewhat alarming rate, it kind of made me wonder how much of our monthly income they could go through if allowed to use materials completely unfettered!!!! I told Geoff we could justify some of it because we don't pay for cable or buy computer games or spend much on entertainment, and I would much rather have them being creative like this. This seems like it has potential for being a great way to teach them about budgeting, by setting up a budget for crafts and creations and helping them learn how to make choices, bargain shop, save for bigger things and so forth. We just haven't sat down and figured it out yet.
Oh no. While I was typing little G came back and showed me a Ranger Rick article he just found about a guy making a real boat out of popsicle sticks - 15 million of them!!!

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