Mommio: Non-Traditional Schooling

I was determined that this last Monday was going to be a real "school day", with us in the hospital for a week the entire schedule was gone (again).  But, I was far too tired and unprepared to get school started on Monday morning so we came up with some educational alternatives for the day.  We have been trying to fit in more cooperative work lately, so I paired Mason and Gabe up to build robot from a kit that Connor was given in the hospital.  Avery and Marney were begging for a project of their own and we finally settled on letting them make the menu and grocery list for the week.  They were thrilled at this and thought it would be a breeze.
Mason and Gabe were a great team and built the robot ("Rob") from scratch by following the directions, without fighting and with very little help from me.  I was very impressed.  Good work guys!

 For the girls, things did not go as smoothly.  They started off quickly but soon hit a wall when they realized how many steps were involved in cooking and shopping for a family of ten.  Make the menu, find the recipes for things we make from scratch, make a list of EVERYTHING we need for everything on the menu plus all the other household things, check the list to see what we have and what we need, write out the grocery list in a way we could understand it at the store.  Whew!  So, after four hours and lots of grumbling they did accomplish the task and even went shopping with their list the next day (another eye opener for them).  Overall, they worked really hard, learned a lot and an added bonus- realized how much work I am doing on this each week.  Good work girls, feel free to do it again next week!