Our New Treat Shop

I simply had to do something.  My kids were constantly eating any special treats I brought home within the first day I bought them.  Then, I'd be heading out the door to the grocery store, and I'd hear, "Hey Mom, can you please grab some....(fill in the blank)".  And what's worse, when I was AT the store, my phone would ring, and low and behold, it's one of my kids asking for me to bring something else home!  It got so old!

And so, I had to implement a system for handling our special requests.  I don't want to be a mom who always says No to anything not healthy.  We all need to be able to enjoy treats and special meals out once in a while...but this was ridiculous.

After thinking long and hard, I created our very own Treat Shop.  I stocked up on some of the family's favorite treats, and put them in a locked cabinet.  I sorted the items out into bins according to price that we pay (I rounded up).  Sodas are $0.25.  Small bags of chips are $0.25.  Peach tea is $0.50.  Cookies are also $0.50.

Each person in the family will get $30 a month (we'll see if that's the right amount later) to use towards buying treats in the shop, or eating out.  This includes grabbing snacks at the ballgame, popcorn at the movies, eating lunch out at Chickfila, etc.  I think it's a decent amount that means we can eat out once or twice a month, and still have a little wiggle room for some junk food snacks...but not too much.

We will each have a jar with cash in it (kids learn better with real dollars in their hands!), and then we will have a Treat Shop Jar, where we pay into for our treats.  At the end of the month, I'll use the Treat Shop Jar money to replenish our snacks.  The kids can put in "Treat Requests" that I will consider when I go to the store ONCE A MONTH when it's time to replenish the stash!  I will not accept requests at any other time.  So they can write them down and stick them in the Treat Shop Jar anytime, but we won't discuss these requests until it's time to replenish the stash!

I am hoping this helps with 3 things here.  First, I am hoping it really cuts down our budget.  It's so easy to just grab something while we are out about town, or get a snack at the ballgame.  But at $5-10 a pop, for 5 people, that means we are paying $25 for everyone to get a snack at the ballgame...or about $40 every time we grab lunch out.  That's a TON of money to not be keeping a handle on!

Secondly, I hope this teaches the kids about planning ahead.  Sure, you can get a $5 treat at the ballgame, OR you can plan ahead and grab a $0.50 treat from our treat shop before you leave the house.  Also, if you hope to eat lunch out, you need to make sure that you are prepared for that and have cash in hand before leaving the house.  This will help teach them (and remind me!) that we shouldn't be buying on impulse!

And lastly, I'm hoping this helps us to eat healthier.  We have gotten into some bad habits lately, and I want to correct them now.  We eat out at least once or twice a week just because it's so convenient.  Also, with all the special requests I get when going to the grocery store, even though I try to keep track of my grocery budget, I don't track how much is going towards healthy foods, and how much towards junk food.  This will really put a limit on how much we are snacking on unhealthy foods.

I will add more later about what our meals and healthy snacks look like these days soon!

Math - Best Laid Plans

Math curricula has always been a struggle for our family.

Storyteller HATES math, although she's very good at it!  Since she's our oldest child guinea pig child, she's the one who gets to pave the way with all of my best laid plans.

When she hit algebra in particular, I wanted to make sure she was getting The Best High School Math education that she could get.  Why?  Umm....because.  Why not?!  She should have only the best education here, right?

Well, after MUCH obsessive research, I finally settled on Life of Fred for Algebra.  We had done all the previous books together, and my math-genius husband thought it was a VERY solid program!  So, it was a done deal!  Life of Fred for Algebra!

But then, we got half way through the book....and it bombed for us.  It was going so great too!  We were factoring polynomials with ease...and then it came crashing down for her.  It just jumped SO quickly from one thing to the next, that even when we used the extra practice problems, it just moved too quickly for her (and for me!).  I LOVED algebra in school...I loved ALL math classes in school, and yet this one just crashed and burned so quickly.  And so my dear 13 year old got so discouraged.

So we tried a more "traditional" math program.  I went with Jacob's Beginning Algebra.  It went smoothly for a bit, but she hated that one too.  It was just too much work, too much graphing, too little to do with her life.  So we finally bailed on that one too.

And then I found CTC Math, which I hoped would be The Holy Grail of Algebra for us.  And again, it went great for a little while.  But then that one too became too difficult for her to understand.  I tried helping her occasionally, but without watching his videos, I couldn't remember exactly what to do...and even when I did watch the videos, sometimes we still couldn't work through the answers correctly.

And then one day, she became very frustrated when working on negative exponents and square roots, and just asked me, "Mom, why do I have to know all this stuff?  When am I every going to use this in real life?"  And you know what?!  I had NO answer for her!  I mean, I'm 38 years old, and you  know the only time I've ever used this stuff?  When homeschooling her!  LOL!

And so, I decided that this wasn't worth it!  She wants to be a writer.  To create fictional worlds and allow people to escape reality through her written word.  She doesn't NEED to have super rigorous math programs through high school.

I thought back to our earlier homeschooling days.  When Storyteller first was pulled from public school after 3rd grade, her math skills weren't that great.  She could DO math, but she certainly didn't understand it.  And so we used Math-U-See for elementary school math.  She started at the very beginning, the Alpha level, in 4th grade, and quickly went through all of the elementary levels in a year or 18 months.  And it all clicked for her.  Math became EASY for her.

After rejecting Math-U-See for high school several years ago, after reading some reviews that said it was "too easy" and "not rigorous enough" I decided enough is enough.  For Storyteller, do I really care if her math isn't as rigorous as it possibly could be?  NO!  She's not going into math or science fields.  So, let her be!  Let her enjoy math again.  Let her do a math program that will teach her what she NEEDS to know, but maybe not EVERY POSSIBLE THING SHE COULD KNOW about math.  It will be ok!

And so today, we started Math-U-See's Algebra 1 program.  She flipped through the books and was astonished at how EASY it looks to her now, after the failures we've had in the past.  Could she skip through a lot of this book?  Absolutely!  But I figure if we go through it at a pace that works for her, that she can have the pride of completing the whole program.  Also, we will catch anything along the way that maybe didn't make much sense to her.

I think we're finally on a great math path for her again!  In fact, I told her she could probably finish Algebra 1, Algebra 2, and Geometry in the next year or so....so she could be FINISHED high school math by 10th grade....and she LOVED that idea!  And I think Math-U-See will get her there! 

I learned so much going thru basic arithmetic with Math-U-See.  I've always been great at math, but this program taught me to See math in ways I never had before!  I think it will be excellent for her (and for Ballerina)...and I'd rather them have a SOLID understanding of fewer math topics that they can build on later if they desire...than to have a very FRAGILE understanding of a vast amount of math topics!