Taking Care of Business

Yesterday I went with Maria and the rest of the 6th graders to the field trip to "Biztown."  Basically, its a pretend town where they assign each child a job, and then the town runs based on these jobs for an entire day.  The kids have checkbooks, get paychecks, have to apply for bank loans, buy goods, etc.  The "town" is set up in an old school building in downtown Columbus, and each "business" had its own room and sign.  The kids had already been assigned their jobs and had been working on their checkbooks and knew their job descriptions.  Maria was chosen as Mayor of Biztown, and got to give a speech to the rest of the town at the beginning of the day.  It was really cute to watch the kids take charge and act like adults.

The parents who went were assigned to "help" in whatever particular shop their child was in.  Since Maria was in City Hall, I was there to help along with two Dads.  There were only 6 kids in City Hall, so needless to say, our kids had plenty of help.  Although they didn't really need us much, since the kids had been working on all of this for weeks and we had just been thrown in the mix yesterday with a confusing half hour orientation, I'm not sure we were really needed much at all.

It was a fun day, and the kids really seemed to enjoy themselves.  Maria worked so hard, and it was so hot in City Hall (it was 70 degrees outside but the boiler heat on this old building was on full blast) that I thought for sure she would take a nap when we got home - she was so tired.  But she just rested for a couple of hours before we went to her Middle School Student Council bowling night last night.