Your Business Math - Pet Store

As with all elementary Montessori work, the idea is to get the child exploring and learning of his own accord - provide him the keys and let him do the unlocking ;)

Along that vein, when Legoboy came across some information about Your Business Math, he was really excited! And started saving his money for it.

While business math is ideal for the adolescent age, there is nothing wrong with some sidework in the business world at the elementary age too!  They have three options: pet store, book store, or sports store. We have the e-book version of the pet store.

There is a bit of printing with the e-book, but it saved shelfspace and allowed us to just print what we need so I'm good ;) You can print straight from the pdf they send you or they have links on their website to download just the needed pages.

He got started on it the week before Thanksgiving and while he would be happy to fly right through it, I am intentionally slowing him down so that we truly focus in on each step of the process.

You work in "months" which take about an hour each to do if you fly straight through and a bit longer if you are more mindful.

As I said, he started to fly straight through, because
he was SO excited. He mis-spelled a word -
but he's corrected that since I took the photo.
I would have added more color, but
he preferred keeping it simple. 

We spent one evening just setting up. I sat at the computer and worked; he came to me for the next step to read the instructions, print as needed, then he was off. When he needed guidance he brought his binder to me and we worked through it. This way, I was "occupied" but available and would not fall to temptation to micro-manage. ;)

He chose a binder and some dividers; drew out a logo and selected a name for his store:

The first divider - all inventory sheets, order forms,
customer orders,, ledgers, etc. for each month
are behind their own tab. 

We like it. I wish it was a bit more intense, so we could more easily beef it up and make it a younger adolescent experience - but this is solidly 8-12 as their website specifies - and I could see most Montessori 11 and 12 years old wishing for more intensity.

The nice thing with families - is that each child can have their own store - the instructions are the same, the order details are different - and they can place orders with each other. There are other ways to provide variations, such as other family members placing pretend orders, choosing not to accept a program-provided order on moral grounds (ie one customer wants to feed his animal purchase to his other animal, so would you as a *pet* store owner want to allow that, etc). The instructions note when you should develop certain policies such as these. And there are certainly your own variations you can make as you like.

There are chance cards and cards for "additional in-store sales" (AISS cards). These also add some variations and allow for varying situations.

At the end of each month, profit and loss are calculated; as well as at the end of the year. Evaluate how things went, what worked, what didn't - and how would this all work in the real world.


Down-sides: 

• The ledger system is a single-line - good for some purposes, but some accounting records need double-entry - this might be an item to add to an adolescent experience, following using this program in elementary - build up complexity in increments. 
• The labels of debit and credit are incorrect - reflecting what your personal bank statement looks like rather than what a real business ledger account would look like. This is easy to fix by simply crossing them out and re-writing them - or leaving those words out altogether. It is also a good discussion point for the children - when is a debit "money in" and when it is "money out". 
• the orders have no actual dates, so we make them up. The program has you calculating all ledger entries at the end of each "month" instead of as it happens. This has benefits and drawbacks in the real world. Another discussion point for the children. 
• the chance and AISS cards can be a tad confusing - how to record them for example: if you had $450 in additional in-store sales, what inventory are you replacing? It doesn't say. So we chose to mark it down as services rendered - perhaps pet-boarding for the day or the weekend; or delivery service. We just have to ignore the other expenses (extra food used, gas, mileage) - this is where this is program is solidly elementary, but would not be appropriate for adolescence who want real world experience. So we make the adjustments, gain the experience and move on. 
• If a chance card says increase earnings by 10% - 10% of WHAT!? It doesn't say, so I created another set of chance cards, that when this sort of card is picked, he draws from the new stack to tell us the percentage of what - AISS, monthly profit/loss, total income for the month, etc. 

For what it is and what it purports to do, it is fun, lays a good foundation and introduces the practical purpose of various math concepts. Can't beat it! It would be great to see something for middle schoolers with more of the "trickiness" included - perhaps that is something to look forward to! 

Last Year in Lower Elementary - Singing the Blues

I am so happy - and so sad... My little boy is growing up!

He is entering into this last year of "lower elementary". While we use AMI albums and consider elementary a continuum from 6-12, there is a certain sense of moving forward in this next year that is the typical parental bittersweet moment ;)

For the first two years of lower elementary we have almost entirely just followed the Montessori albums, throwing in our own interests and my own requirements here and there. For the sake of our personal situation, I also have "traditional school" lesson plans on which we mark off accomplished skills and record attendance (our state only requires 180 days per school year of attendance). According to those plans, he finished 3rd grade back in January (of his normally 2nd grade year). Montessori just does that ;) And we have plenty of time to explore all his own interests! A year and a half of Ancient Egypt has been a bit much for me personally, but it has been GREAT for him!

For this third year, we'll have a bit more planning to do. I have pulled all the state standards for 3rd grade in our state. He is responsible, over the course of the next year, to ensure that he has all listed skills, knowledge and experience.

Occasionally items from this list might make it onto his weekly work plan, but mostly it will just be up to him every so often to check the list and decide how to proceed. If he knows something intuitively, he can just let it go, but knowing my son, he'll likely make a little booklet that demonstrates each skill listed on the standards. I will actually be surprised if this doesn't happen.

We're doing mathematics, language arts, science, social studies, art, and physical education (the last two only because he "wants" to - ok, fine ;) ).

Looking things over, the only areas he might be "missing" are contained within social studies, particularly local history. He will develop his own plan for going about the requirements, with my assistance. We'll head to the library for books and videos, then expand from there - he might make dioramas, art projects, timelines, charts, posters, lists, diagrams or who knows what. There are SO many ways to fulfill those requirements - and there is no one right way!

And for the record, it's not that local history is left out of the Montessori elementary albums - it is that local history MUST be developed by the local teacher and the students in conjunction with one another. Montessori history covers the framework within which to study history; and the details are left to personal research. Culture and all other aspects of social studies are covered in-depth.

As homeschoolers in our state, we do not HAVE to follow those standards; but I choose to follow the Montessori elementary albums in this regard; there is a focus on the local public school requirements in the 3rd year of lower and of upper elementary. I believe it will help to instill a sense of responsibility to and respect for local authorities, strengthen his work ethic, provide practice in a safe environment for the future when he has to do things he'd rather not do (without overwhelming him now), and set a sound pattern for a mature adulthood.


So here we are at a benchmark. Leaving behind the total freedom of primary; and the relative freedom of lower elementary; to embrace a year of outside requirements. Then we'll have two more years entirely to ourselves before we repeat at age 12 years.


Ok. Reality is that the public school requirements take an average of 5 minutes per week, if that! So this is just a mommy making a mountain of a molehill ;) Hehe.

Amazing Myself

Sometimes I amaze myself.

I entered a giveaway with Alison's Montessori. I won! I thought I'd won a Power of Two cube - it was a crazy time in our lives that particular week, so I didn't entirely pay attention...

I recently received my new Montessori material. It's the Power of THREE cube! It is BEAUTIFUL!

18cm cube demonstrating the power of 3
Thank you Alison's Montessori!

But see, here's the kicker: my AMI Montessori albums do not have a material for this presentation! The children should be working on some level of abstraction when they receive this presentation! I have an album page - it just doesn't require a material. (so the "amazing myself" part is that I entered to win, and WON, an item I would not have purchased to begin with - however, it is SO BEAUTIFUL! have I said that yet!?) ;)

If we provide a material for *everything* (especially at upper elementary), the children's creativity will decrease, their exploratory learning will diminish, and it will be more difficult to reach abstraction. I've just seen it happen too many times.

Our solution? We're going to use it in lower elementary as a sensorial exploration (kind of like having the binomial and trinomial cubes in primary); then I'll still give the presentation in upper elementary as-is according to my album page. And if my son or my co-op kids make the connection themselves, all the better. But since I only have my co-op kids a few times a month, the sensorial exploration will be PERFECTION for them!

As it stands, my son (just-turned-8) has already figured it out. He was putting it together blind-folded within 30 minutes of receiving it ;)

UPDATE 1/3/2016 After almost 4 years, an update is in order ;) I did end up selling this material (at cost for shipping) as we found it just wasn't necessary, it was an easy "puzzle" and nothing was really coming from it. Afterwards I saw that it is included in the Adolescent Mathematics album that does take it deeper. Ok, that is great, but honestly? The pieces are too big. the material is quite combersome. I have found a way to create this material from folded up cardstock that is not only smaller, but more enticing. Essentially, start with the Power of 2 Cube and add in the pieces you need from there. A post will be forthcoming in 2016 on this topic. ;)