bank tour and meeting a new homeschooling group

Yesterday was Aidan’s day for acting (make-believe) class. However, I gave him the choice between going to acting or going on a bank tour (and to meet a homeschooling group for the first time)–he choose to go on the bank tour. It was exciting for me to meet a group of other families that are also homeschooling. I know Aidan was a little nervous about all these new people–he clung to me like a tree frog to a tree! But, I really enjoyed meeting this group. They all seemed very friendly and down to earth. I especially like that this group is a smaller group and that most of the children within these families are under the age of ten. I know that age doesn’t necessarily matter, but I do think that families who are homeschooling older children are experiencing different issues than those who are homeschooling younger ones. In any case, I am truly excited about attending more events with this group and hopefully getting to know them better.

Aidan was a bit disappointed about the bank tour. He was hoping that they would show more areas of the bank and show how exactly things operate (e.g. even though the two of us have talked about this, he really wanted to hear more from them about the vacuum tubes for the drive-through). The woman who talked with the group was nice and she did show the kids the back of the bank where the employees work, including one of the vaults. But for security reasons the bank could only allow two of the adults back there with the kids and we were only in the back area for a very limited time. She did also talk with the children in the front waiting area of the bank about savings accounts and how to go about depositing money into these accounts. I was able to ask Aidan’s question for him about the vacuum tubes so I think he was happy to have them talk a bit about this, but as I mentioned he would have really liked it more to have seen with his own eyes how exactly the tubes work, the buttons that they need to press, etc. I think the favorite part for Aidan was receiving some “give aways”–including some play money, a fun book about money, and a cool envelope to put all the stuff in! Even though Aidan was hoping that the tour would be longer and that they would see more, this tour did get us talking the rest of the day about different things pertaining to banks and money. He was extremely excited about using his play money for his cash register at home and to play bank with. We also talked more about different types of money, identifying the different coins, and about the importance of savings. Later that day Aidan was also drawing pictures of coins for him to use as displays for his pretend bank at home. All in all it was a fun day.