1062.65

Hummm...What are you lookin' at???
The reason for the Long pause between posts.
And the short answer?
Our Junk.

So it's "Junk Clearing" time again.
Our Annual Mandarin Playgroup's Yard Sale is back!  Junk Central is Chez Moi.  Long driveway, perfect for displaying oldies but goodies (to others). This means all bags are dropped at my doorstep for the FUN FEST of sorting and tagging the 3 weeks before the big sale.

This time, 10 families joined in the madness!
Also new this year?  An expanded "Dollar Snack Shack"!

Buying & Selling.
Pass up an opportunity for kids to practice real life transactions?  Not on a Montessori mama's life!  No...things are not free in life, and YES, we have to WORK for them.   And that work is actually FUN...most of the time!

This little four letter word gets a bad wrap these days.  WORK.  It's really too bad.  There are lots of way worst ones out there.  "Work" is just the process of arriving at the next step of things.  Nothing loaded... just a process.  Yet ALOT of us spend ALOT of time trying to avoid it.  It's like lifting your foot to take the next step so you can actually get somewhere, right?

Well for our Snack Shack Steps, we (with kids) made the signs, set the menu, made the inventory, then had the kids use a cash register and sell the products while trying not to consume everything themselves (lesson in self control built-in.)  Work...but they felt like grown ups doing all this.  And grown ups DO work, alot.  Especially ones that stay home with kids all day...boy, do we work.  
To be humane, we offered each child 2 snack coupons to redeem at the shack.

Why was everything a dollar?
Easy math.  One item = One dollar.  At ages 3-5, this math was something achievable.  Minimal adult supervision, maximum independence.  Although from the looks of the picture above, we may have ate most of our profits...yikes.  Perhaps more adult supervision may have been wise.

After the fun hard work, we served a yummy Chinese noodle lunch complete with Boba drinks!  (Yes, more food makes a happy bunch.)

More snap shots of the Big Sale!

@ the Check Out.

Snack Shop Maintenance.

Lollipops & Silly Faces...hard work.

Humm...what to eat next?

Given our jaw dropping success at last year's sale, we fell a little short of record breaking this year.
But with only a year's time to "restock" our junk, I'd say we did pretty well.

Still managed to juice this out.
1062.65
A nice chunk o'change to reuse and recycle.
Wanna go clear out some junk with some of your mommy pals?