Frugal Fun Friday

There are days when I wonder if my children have ever heard me utter the word “yes.” I feel as though I spend most of my day either correcting behavior with “no” or answering requests of children for privileges with “no.” It is no wonder that my 2 year old was proficient in her use of the word long before she learned how to form her mouth around it’s opposite. It’s not that I am opposed to fun projects, in fact, I love them! It just seems that their requests come at the worst possible times.

 

Yesterday afternoon, I gathered the boys around the table and let them know that I had a small project for them. “Oh no, is this one of those projects that is really just work?” Wow, maybe I’m not even as fun as I thought that I was! I asked them to write down fun things that they would like to do, but I always tell them no. Oh, they had fun with this task. I saw quickly that I did need to lay out some guidelines. They couldn’t ask to break any of our house rules. They couldn’t ask for a lot of money to be spent. These were to be activities, not prizes. The two older boys would whisper back and forth between each other, giggling as they thought of things that I would surely hate. The youngest boy would dictate his requests to me while I wrote them on little slips of notebook paper.

 

We had taken construction paper and a marker to make a label that said “YES, you can.” Each slip of paper was folded and dropped into the coffee can with our new label on it. We now have a yes can! On those days that are deemed worthy, one boy will pull one slip from our can. That will be our activity for that day. No matter how much extra cleaning is involved, no matter how nutritionally unsound, no matter what it is, we will be following the rules of our new game. I must follow them, for I am the one who made the rules!

 

Now to see what sort of discount we got today. Craft materials from the craft box- practically free. Ideas from the children’s heads- free and abundant! Liz Price= FREE!

  

Oh, and just incase you wondered what sort of things the children came up with, I’ll list just a few:

• Peanut butter sandwiches for supper
• Melting crayons in order to make new ones
• 20 minutes extra time on the computer
• No school for the rest of the day
• Crafts with beads
• Costume day
• Print and bind our own authored stories
• Peanut butter sandwiches for breakfast (Yes, they love peanut butter!)