3rd Grade Market Place

Today, Jacob's class had their second market place day.  While the last market place day was for the fellow third graders, this one was for parents.  Yesterday, he and I made a giant batch of rice crispy treats to sell.  He had an inventory of sixty this time, as opposed to thirty-nine last time. 

When the parent arrived, the teachers give the parents a stack of "panther paws", which are the currency for the market.  I found out toward the end that you could go back and get more money. 

At first I went around and tried to patronize the shops of the kids that I knew.  I bought brownies, a painted rock, and a rice crispy treat (from Jacob).  I played a few games.  The first was a word search game by one of the boys in Jacob's Cub Scout den.  Next I gave at try at the game "Are you Smarter Than a Third Grader."  To win, the contestant had to answer a question each in math, plants, mollusks and crayfish.  Let me tell you, aside from math, I haven't exactly been studying these other subjects in quite a while.  I answered the plants, mollusks and math question without too much trouble.  Math was very simple (3x10), while the other two required a bit of thinking. 

So the final question on crayfish was "Do crayfish have ears?"  When I hear the question, one of two things come to mind.  Either they don't have ears, or they have ears in some unusual place (like the cricket that has ears on its knees).  Jacob was sitting at the booth next to me, and I know my son's nature.  I loudly muse "hmm, do crayfish have ears?".  Jacob turns to me, cubs his hand to his mouth and whispers "no."  A few seconds later, I'm sporting a "Smart" sticker on my shirt.   

About half way through the market time, I went and fetched Aleena from class and took her around the market.  She seemed to have fun, although she was ready to go after about fifteen minutes. 

Overall, we had fun.  Jacob did pretty well, selling almost all of his product.  I think he had four or five left.  His big improvement, however, was that he did not spend all his money this time as he did last time.