ABCD is loving 3rd grade, with Waldorf's emphasis on practical skills and most importantly practical math. With the start of the new year and the start of school again after the winter holidays we're starting the Money Lesson Block.
We have Betsy Maestro's "The Story of Money" and Eyewitness Books "Money" as spines, "Family Math" for some game-skill inspiration. ABCD talked Papa into buying him an adding machine from Value Village some time ago, and of course we have a toy cash register.
I'm planning four weeks-
1) History of money
barter/trade society to modern forms of money
Alphabet Dollars Code
2) Denominations
coins, $ place value
Coin chart, lots of practice adding, subtracting & making change
3) Value/Use of money
budget, interest, inflation
Pretend shopping with budget and catalogs, grocery fliers, etc.
4) Money around the world
forms of $, changing money
Locating countries on map/globe, drawing flags, matching $
"Amazing Race" type challenge game, with money changing and paying for services, trip
I found somewhere an idea for a school classroom of "paying" the students for coming to school, doing their work, etc., where they would lose money for not completing their assignments or getting in trouble. While the idea kind of has been stuck in my head I don't like the idea of buying school work, plus a big reward at the end of the month isn't really workable, what with 5 birthdays coming up (including some little one's actual birthday). But in the interest of preparing the family for the new baby, reinvigorating our chore charts, studying geography without allocating more school time for it, and helping ABCD to get into the habit of following the lesson schedule on his own, I came up with a variation of this idea. So... new chore charts, schoolwork schedules, winning $ and losing $ based on performance, with a chart for him to keep the tallies for everyone. At the end of the month the $ earned is what have when we start the around the world game.
Which means I just have to create a board game, rules, a game board, and gather information and pictures of all the countries we'll visit on our "Amazing Race". Easy peasy. Almost as easy as just taking the poor kid to a movie if he does his chores reasonably well for a month.
Crikey. Some people's homeschool Moms.
