Money math lessons

Today the kids and I ran around Newport OR for a few hours while Cathy and her girls were at church in Lincoln City. Our first stop was to get me Tylenol to quash a migraine. I knew it was coming thanks to the kaliedascopic periphial vision and ephasia symptoms, but Cathy had no pain killers in the house, having just finished off a bottle and not having gotten to the store for more. By the time we got left her house to head to the store the visual effects were gone and the pain was just beginning. So much for heading it off ... oh well. Bought Tylenol (extra strength and fast acting ...), took it, then continued to wander through the store for an hour or so until the pain was beginning to recede. Whew.

Left the store and headed to the beach. Was disappointed to learn that the pebble-y-ness of the beach we'd visited in Lincoln City when we were last in OR was a fluke perhaps caused by a recent storm. Cathy says all the beaches are usually just sandy. I was reallllly wanting to go back to the pebble-y beach. The kids like looking for shells or sand dollars, and I had fun looking for agates. Still, a sandy beach is better than no beach! We wandered up and down the beach for just under an hour, then the kids were hungry.

We drove the length of Newport along 101 to determine our lunch options. The kids had decided on Subway until they realized that McDonalds had a play place. So the kids ate nuggets and played. After 10 minutes of play Sayer came back to the table to work on homework. She finished the word search book, did one page of analogies (only has 2 pages left in that book, too!), and did two pages of ETC 5 1/2. Then she took off to play for another 10 minutes. When she returned to the table it was time for math. She did 4 pages, laughing all the while about how easy it was. When she was done with the pages the kids played for another 15 minutes, then we headed out.

In the parking lot I saw a scrap of paper blowing by. I hurried the kids toward it and told Sayer to look over *there* ... where she noticed that there was a dollar on the ground. She picked it up, crowing. Then we were at the car and I turned them around while fishing for the keys in my pocket and Sayer said, 'There's another one over there!' So we hurried off and Duncan picked up the other one. Yay! :)

After we got buckled in I asked Sayer how much her dollar was worth. She told me that it was 100 pennies. I agreed and pointed out how much more convenient it was to carry the one piece of paper than to try to manage a double handful of pennies. She laughed and told me that was why they'd invented the paper money. :) As we started driving to another store (still had an hour to kill) I asked Sayer if she could tell me how many dimes were in a dollar. If it was 100 pennies and a dime was worth ... how much, again? She told me a dime was $.10, and 'oh! I know, 10 tens is 100, so ten dimes!' Excellent. So ... how many quarters are in her dollar? Hmmm. 'Well, I think four. Because two quarters is $.50, and that's half of 100, so it'd be four.' Very good! All right, how many nickels? If it takes 10 dimes, and a nickel is half of a dime it'd take twice as many ... She said 'That's easy. Twenty.'

And after all that both kiddos decided they didn't want to spend their found money at our last store stop. They wanted to bring it home and put it in their money banks.

Hooray for found money and for money math :)