The Cookie Business Begins!

Last Saturday while celebrating Darik's birthday, Rigel got the idea to open a cookie business at St. Paul's.  Before long the ideas were racing and he was thinking about all the ways he could expand his business from selling to parents over parent's weekend to selling to the boys in the dorm to setting up a stand at on-campus games and events.  We discussed his ideas (which he dreamed about that first night after staying up making an order sheet) and decided to start small and sell to the boys in the dorm.  In-House Advisee dinner on Monday gave Rigel a good chance to give his marketing speech to Darik's advisees and between them, Titi Lisanne and the Abuelos, he soon had orders for 50 cookies!  That's $16 dollars and yes, he was one very excited boy!

I wanted to support him in this project but not take over, so on Tuesday we had "project time".  He got out the recipe, read it to me, told me what ingredients to get out, and then started to cook.  I helped him when he explicitly asked and gave him pointers on how to do things like measure flour and explained what "creaming" means, but it really was his project and his work!  By evening 4 beautiful trays of cookies were ready to be bagged.  He is charging $1 for 3 cookies or 50 cents for 1.

Tonight Darik is on dorm duty and Rigel loaded up his tray with ordered bags of cookies, bringing the extras and an order form for next week.  It worked!  He sold all of his cookies and several students made orders for next Wednesday, with several paying in advance.  He made $21!  That's more than I've made in a long time!  Seriously, he did very very well and I'm proud of him.  Over the course of the night he went from being nervous to say anything to any student who hadn't already ordered to boldly knocking on doors of unknown students and asking them if they would like to buy a bag.  When he sold out he came home for a much needed night of sleep, but not before counting his money (of course).  I discussed with him the importance of setting aside some money to give away.  He wasn't thrilled by the idea, but agreed that he could set aside $1 for every $10 that he earns.  It's important to me that if he is going to be earning actual amounts of money that he get into the habit of being generous and thinking of others too.

** Update** Rigel has almost $50 of cookie orders for next week!  That's 2 1/2 batches of cookies...we are going to have to figure out whether he can even do that. I guess someone will be making cookie dough this weekend....

And so there you have it.  We didn't do "official" reading or math or writing or spelling today due to a wonderful outing to the Massabesic Audubon Center, Lego Club, and Soccer, but we did learn about: Sargon and the unification of Mesopotamia (thank you SOTW), why leaves change colors in the fall due to the decline of chlorophyll (thank you Ms Kim), and Rigel did get to work on confidence, social skills and basic math through his business. So, all in all, it was a good day!

I continue to feel a bit behind though as I had planned on spending the month of October really trying to apply the ideas in Lori Pickert's "Project Based Homeschooling" book.  I even signed up for and paid to be in an online class that she is leading but this far her almost daily group e-mails are sitting unread in my inbox, I'm only partially through the book, and I feel like I'm not really doing it at all as I'm still largely tied up in my pre-planned curriculums and our outings.  I do feel that Rigel's cookie business is a project though so while I'm not journaling this process (other than this blog) I am trying to serve as a mentor for him while letting him own the process.  I guess there is still quite a bit of October left to get caught up but for now I'm trying to at least keep those ideas from the book that I remember from my first reading in mind.