birthdays

Our March birthdays have come and gone leaving me with a 10 year old and a 7 year old. Amazing the changes in my babies over the last several years. How similar. How different. Eva spent a good bit of her birthday yesterday putting on different lip gloss, playing with fairies and painting and repainting her nails in different shades of purple and red. Samuel is on a money kick, counting money, imagining monopoly games, recounting money, adding, talking about checking accounts and debit cards, playing monopoly games. We had a nice discussion about home mortgages in the grocery store yesterday...With unschooling math, what better thing to use than money. So very many practical applications to think over and over and over. So many places to try it out. Last week when we went to Toys R Us he took a calculator and notebook to keep track of what he wanted and, more importantly, how much money he would have left if he bought it. On the second trip, after making a full tour of the store he left without buying anything. He said the thrill of knowing he could buy anything he wanted was amazing and apparently took the edge off of actually having to buy something. Ah freedom. If only we all felt so free...