Spending Money

Our school had $3400 to spend on science/music/social emotional supplemental materials (from Title IV money from the past three years). The catch is, it has to be ordered through the public school and the money has to be spent before Sept. 30th. At least, that's what I thought. Yesterday I found out we had to turn our ideas in by today, Sept. 1st. Thankfully, I'm a quick thinker. 😉

Yesterday I went through Nasco's science website and saved a bunch of kits, earth science kits, and physical science kits, plus a few science models that would be nice to have but aren't necessary (hence why I haven't bought them yet). I thought that would get us pretty close to the $3000 mark, but I only spent $1000. So this afternoon while my kids worked on art, I searched for STEM building things: Legos, Zoob, Kiva structures, magnatiles, magnetic building sets, ball and stick building sets. So many cool things. 

I turned it in to Mr. E at the end of the day and... he said we were already at $3000 before I sent the new stuff! I estimated the new things would be around $500-1000, so not enough money for everything. But now I was excited about the new building things I discovered. So I quick went over my list from yesterday and cut out things I was kind of 'meh' about or things that wouldn't get used much. I think I got it down to budget. When I typed the list, I put them in high-low priority and grouped them by website to help calculate shipping. 

The other drama of the day is volleyball. We have few girls in 5-8th grade. If they all played, we'd have enough for a team plus a sub. However, one girl is playing volleyball at Nicollet and one of my 5th graders decided not to play. Cue everyone trying to convince her to join. Sigh. Mr. E said we weren't going to have a team if there weren't six players. Sigh. Even more pressure on this girl. She's pretty stubborn though; even so, I didn't want her to feel bad. I told the class I'd convince Mr. E that we could have a team even with five players and we shouldn't force this girl to play when she definitely doesn't want to. I think the problem is solved now. Our coach (a parent) is fine with only having five players and in the past we've played teams with few players, so it should work out okay. They had their first practice today and judging by the sounds from the gym, it was a success! It's a good thing I keep an extra pair of socks and kneepads at school... two girls forgot volleyball stuff at home.