setting up shop

So, the other day I mentioned that I had ordered some new homeschool stuff.... in that stack was this...

Simply Charlotte Mason
Your Business Math Series - Pet Store

We've only been at it this week but my goodness has it been a hit so far! The grade range on this product is listed as grades 3-6... but I'm using it with my two which are 1st and 3rd grade.

They are so incredibly into it. We spent a couple of days deciding what inventory we needed to open our store. It was slow going... but Alex got lots of practice with multiplication as he extended the costs.

Then we had to make our price tags. They worked as a team. Alex did the mark-up calculations and Clara recorded them in the book....
Alex got an introduction to division through this exercise. And through our initial exercise of extending the costs, we even eased Clara into some multiplication... she's very proud of herself since she's doing multiplication too (it doesn't matter to her that the questions that we ask her help on are multiplying by 0's or 1's.... since she's good at skip counting by 5's we've been having her "help" us on those as well). It's been a very easy program to adapt to each kid's individual ability. They each have their main role.... Alex will be working more with figuring orders and Clara will be keeping track of inventory. It's so amazing to me how easily they grasp new concepts when there is an actual purpose to what they're learning.

Once the prices were figured... they excitedly asked if they could actually make a pet store. Why not? So, they've been working feverishly at setting up their shop.... they even worked on it until bedtime tonight (school on a Friday night???) :-)

Here's the progress so far....
They've taken over an old secretary that's currently hanging out in what will, at some point, be my office. On top you have some finished pet food bags (those yet to be colored are on the bottom there)..... the rest is hard to see... but the bigger wads of yarn are leashes and the smaller ones are collars.

Here's Alex showing off a newly finished dog food bag...
some dogs who are waiting for a new home....
and the cats...
After I took these photos they went digging through their stuffed animals looking for birds and rabbits to add to their store.

They absolutely cannot wait to have their first customers! I love seeing them so excited about math... I can't wait to see what else they have in mind for their store!