Work Plans for the Week of February 2, 2015: It's Girl Scout Cookie Time!!!

Who wants Girl Scout cookies?!?

We had a great homeschool week last week, with the kids getting all their schoolwork done, and leaving plenty of time for us to watch Indian superhero films, eat ice cream for dinner, go hiking, and play, play, play!

This week is all about the Girl Scouts, especially those cookies, 32 cases of which Will is currently dividing up in the family room. The kids have orders to deliver, money to manage, and a huge cookie booth at Wal-mart this weekend to prepare for and then run. Non-cookie work gets fitted in wherever it may.

Other academic work will consist of an assigned book for each kid each day (it's usually just something that I think will interest them, and they only have to read it and then talk about it with me), and daily practice of typing and piano.

MONDAY: We started this morning with a Girl Scout field trip to a local business. My friends Scott and Abby started their small natural baby store 8 years ago with just the two of them, and today it's a successful business with a storefront right on the square downtown, a warehouse for online orders, and a staff of part-time employees. They gave the kids a tour of both their spaces, discussed the benefits and challenges of managing your own business, walked the kids through their work flow, and answered all their nosy questions (yes, Will totally asked them how much money they make every month):

My two have already been thinking about how to apply their advice to their own cookie selling.

We went straight from the tour to our volunteer gig, where the kids worked hard and helped for two hours (with one small break for Saltines and peanut butter, and an Otter Pop at the end), and then we went straight to the big Girl Scout cookie delivery on the other side of town, to pick up our troop's initial order. It may surprise you to learn that I don't actually tend to run errands during our "school day," just because that's not how I want to spend our school time, but Girl Scout cookies are the exception, of COURSE. And now Will is in the other room with our troop's master order list, dividing the cases up by kid and filling out receipts to be signed by moms.

Other tasks to be completed today are research to make an infographic on Przewalski’s horse, math (Syd has Math Mammoth, and Will has a worksheet on equivalent fractions, to be used with fraction manipulatives), and the beginning of Syd's week in her Minecraft Homeschool class.

TUESDAY: Free day!!! Our day has already run so long that I'm actually going to encourage the children to leave today's math and science until this day. Other than that, we'll stay home and play until Will's evening Robotics Club.

WEDNESDAY: LEGO Club, horseback riding class, and Magic Tree House Club take up almost this entire day. On top of that, I'll only be asking the children to complete another lesson in Math Mammoth, and Will can continue to work on another essay contest.

THURSDAY: Again, we'll spend much of this day out and about. Will has a writing class that will take up much of the morning, and we'll go from there to our homeschool group's Gym Day at a local community center. The children will have their Hoffman Academy keyboard lesson, and can begin to work on the cookie booth that they'll be running this weekend.

FRIDAY: The children will have a grammar lesson using First Language Lessons, and they'll spend most of the morning at math class. Our Girl Scout troop will be presenting Mongolia for the Girl Scout World Thinking Day celebration later this month, so we'll be listening to the Mongolia chapters in The Story of the World on this day, and answering the comprehension questions. Will has ice skating class, and Syd should finish up her week's assignments in Minecraft Homeschool.

And there will be more cookie booth plans to plan!

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: On Saturday, Syd has ballet, then both children will do something special with Matt, and then they have Chinese. On Sunday, they'll be running a Girl Scout cookie booth at our town's Wal-mart, and Will also has chess club.

It's a busy week, I know! There's a lot of out and about in this week, which I get tired of, but the kids never do. It always amazes me that what I might see as scut work (selling cookies?!?) might be a major source of joy in their lives, and my attitude must therefore be adjusted accordingly. So out and about we will go, stand in the cold and sell cookies we will, and at the end of each day, well, kids who've been out and about all day need to go to bed early and get their rest...

...and their mommas need to watch TV and eat Girl Scout cookies!